The Overlord's Lady
by joanhello
Summary: What if Megamind really tried to rule the city instead of just messing around with it? An AU that starts with Bernard not being there at the museum. Warnings: sexytimes, cuss words, violence, gore.
1. Chapter 1

If Megamind had really been ruling the city, as he'd always said he intended to do, the city might have been in better shape than it was. But he wasn't ruling it. He was just, from what Roxanne could tell, indulging in an over-sized crime spree. Confiscating art from the City Gallery. Vandalizing buildings and vehicles. Most recently, he'd helped himself to all the money in all the banks, forcing them to shut down.

This last one hit Roxanne personally, because it interfered with KMCP's ability to pay her. The station's management was issuing script to its employees, basically IOUs, to be redeemed when and if things ever got back to normal. Those stores that remained open were taking the script for now, but it was an open question how much longer that could continue, especially for those businesses such as the grocery stores and the power company, that bought goods from outside the city and therefore had to have actual money. Every business that could borrow from outside, was borrowing. That couldn't continue forever. In another month or two, the outside sources of credit would run dry, the vital services would begin to shut down, and people would begin to leave in earnest. In a year, this city could be practically a ghost town, occupied only by the few who couldn't get away or had nowhere to go, scavenging in the ruins. She wondered if the Evil Overlord, as he styled himself these days, would be one of them, or whether he would abandon the city once he'd ruined it.

She didn't know. She had once been foolish enough to think she knew Megamind, to think he was harmless and kind of incompetent under his intimidating facade. Then he had killed Metro Man and crowed over the corpse. It had been the most disturbing thing she'd ever seen. He'd been running rampant through the streets ever since, and it was anyone's guess whether the damage he'd done since was deliberate or whether he was like a four-year-old who'd gotten hold of a loaded gun and was firing it at random without understanding how dangerous it was.

She'd gone into the Metro Man Museum after her broadcast there, thinking that she would look up at the sculpted face on the giant statue of him and say these things, really vent her sorrow and frustration and fear, as she had occasionally vented to him in person. She would try to remember the soothing words he had said to her on those previous occasions, words like, _Don't worry, Roxie. Wherever evil exists, good will always rise up to meet it._ She hoped it would make her feel better. She had just gotten started on this when she heard another voice from the other side of the statue, a voice at once so familiar and so out of place that her first thought was _It can't be. Not him. Not here._

Then she had to find the owner of the voice, to prove to herself that it wasn't Megamind, that he wouldn't come here of all places. She went around the statue just enough to barely glimpse one arm and one foot in dark clothing. It was loose fitting and the footwear looked like it might be some sort of clog, although actual clogs would make more noise, so this wasn't a typical Megamind costume, but then this was not a planned public appearance. Who knew what Megamind would wear when he wasn't terrorizing the city or in prison? Then whoever it was dodged away behind the statue. She called out again, moved faster, and the unknown figure fled from her. She actually broke into a run and chased the mysterious person all the way around the catwalk, when she heard that voice again, behind her this time, close and unmistakable.

"Ms. Ritchi!" She turned, startled. It was him. He was wearing a cape, holding part of the fabric in front of himself, hiding whatever else he was wearing. "You need to leave," he said. "Now."

"No!" she replied. "You can't just tell me to leave. I'll stay as -"

"Look down, Ms. Ritchi!" he almost shouted. She looked through the glass floor they were standing on.

Movement. The strange gliding movement of brainbots. And dark things, cylinders and rectangles, piled up around the base of the statue and studding the floor around it. "Those are explosives," continued Megamind. "If I'd known you were here, I'd have waited, but the detonator's been set. We have two minutes, thirty-seven seconds. The elevator, Ms. Ritchi."

She had to look around for it. The chase around the statue had left her disoriented. The nearest elevator was behind him. He watched her as she walked around him, turning so that he continued to face her. When she was beside him, he started to walk with her. They got in the elevator together.

By unspoken agreement they stood as far from each other as they could. Once again he adjusted the cape to hide his body from her. It made her notice what was below the cape, on his feet: not clogs, but bedroom slippers. Black bedroom slippers with little stubby bat wings sticking out and little slitted eyes. And the ends of the pant legs that she could see just above those slippers looked like pajama legs. He had come here to set explosives, to destroy the museum, in his nightclothes? The frivolous detail infuriated her.

"Why?" she asked him as the elevator started to move. "This is the last remembrance of him we have. Why destroy it?"

"Because I couldn't stand to look at it anymore." She'd had enough experience as an interviewer to recognize, and be startled by, the bitter tone in his voice.

"Regrets? You?"

"Regrets. Me. Here's an irony, if you like them: victory has turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life."

The door opened. He poked a blue hand - no gloves, she noticed - out of the cape and motioned her out ahead of him. On the way down the escalator, she digested this information. If an interviewee had started talking about regrets like this, the obvious question would have been whether this meant a new direction for him. But an ordinary interviewee would not be someone whose direction would affect her life. Regrets sounded good, but with Megamind there was no telling whether his new direction would be less destructive or more so. As they left the building, she started to ask anyway, but as she turned to him, he urged her on.

"Keep going. You should have some walls between you and the blast. Around the corner." So they kept going. Three steps around the corner, they stopped. "There," he said. "You can call your station now. If the helicopter is up, it might be able to get footage of the explosion. Goodnight, Ms. Ritchi." He started to turn away.

"Megamind, wait." He turned back to her. "Why did you save me?"

"Ms. Ritchi, in all our association, surely you've realized that it is not my intention ever to allow harm to come to you by my actions."

"If any harm had come to me and then Metro Man had accidentally-on-purpose dropped you from a hundred feet up while taking you to jail - I mean, he wouldn't have done that, he was a good guy - but if he had, there would have been no repercussions, for him or anyone else. Now you're the one facing no repercussions. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Why did you save me?"

"I love you," he said. "I thought you knew." He hadn't meant to say it, but he had thought that she, so observant, so intelligent, had at least guessed at the possibility. But no, as the astonishment blossomed on her face, he saw that the thought had never crossed her mind. Astonishment gave way to confusion. Suddenly he did not want to see whatever expression followed that confusion, whether disgust, horror, fury, offended dignity... no, he very much did not want to see it. He turned and fled back toward City Hall.

He was halfway there when the explosion lit him up, his cape flying up behind him, revealing that he was, in fact, wearing pajamas. She continued to watch as the glare died away, until she saw his little dark shape slip up the steps and in the double doors. Then she called the station manager. _He destroys the museum, he saves my life, he says he loves me, and then he runs away. What's going on with him?_ she asked herself as she hung up. She thought of schoolgirl crushes, celebrity stalkers and then, for some reason, her gay cousin describing his first act after coming out to himself: he'd gone to the street where the Pride Center was and walked around and around the block, trying to work up the nerve to go in. It had taken him four afternoons. _So it could be that this is something he doesn't want to feel because it's inconsistent with what he wants to be. Maybe he's saying to himself, "I'm a villain. I don't do love." Or maybe "I don't do humans."_ But he sounded like he'd come out to himself about this a long time ago. How long? How many of those kidnappings weren't about Metro Man at all? And then why, once the city was his, had he acted as if he'd forgotten about her, until now? _Come on, Roxanne. This is too obvious. He's got to see love as a weakness, and he can't ever admit to having a weakness_.

Less than an hour later she was being filmed again, speaking from the same spot where she'd stood for her earlier report, now surrounded by shattered glass and the broken fragments of the statue, telling the city what had just happened here. Looking past Hal, she saw, through the windows of the office that had been the Mayor's, a television screen showing her face, reporting live, with Megamind's head silhouetted against it. She finished, made the _cut_ gesture, and the anchor man's face replaced hers on the screen.

"Roxie," said Hal. "You want a ride home?"

"Look, Hal," she said. "He's watching." Hal's gaze followed hers.

"Whoa," he said. "That feels weird."

"I'm going in there."

"What? Roxie, are you nuts? What if he kidnaps you again?"

"He said he would never hurt me, and that's one thing he's been consistent about over the years. I'm probably the only person in the city who's safe from him. I'm going in there and I'm going to ask him to not destroy the station. Don't follow me. He might get all weird if you're there. Just wait for me. Okay?"

"Okay, Roxie. I'll be here. Roxie, you sure you want to do this?"

"Someone has to. I can."

"Okay. If you, like, need help and you can't use your phone, break a window and I'll call for help."

"Thanks, Hal."

She went down the steps and crossed into the plaza. She had a moment of nervousness when a patrolling brainbot floated past as she went up the steps, but it ignored her. _He probably programmed them to leave me alone unless he told them otherwise, so they wouldn't interfere during kidnappings._ She opened the door. She could hear a commercial, one that KMCP News ran regularly.

"Megamind," she called out. There was a thump from inside. She knew he had a tendency to drop things and bump into things when he was startled. After a moment, she heard his voice.

"In here, Ms. Ritchi." She followed the sound forward into the dim foyer through the double doorway. The doors themselves were gone. On the big desk was a flat TV screen, facing away from her. As she watched, a blue hand moved it aside, revealing Megamind, sitting behind it. The room was lit only by the screen, but she could see stacks of money, paintings from the gallery, all kinds of loot. On the desk itself, along with more loot, were a long wooden plaque with spikes along the top, that she couldn't read because it was back-lit, and one of those plastic drinking bird things. As before, he was holding his cloak across his body, hiding it.

"To what do I own the honor?"

"I saw you watching."

"You know I'm a regular viewer."

"And you know that if you want to stay a regular viewer, the station has to keep broadcasting."

"Why wouldn't it?"

"There are certain things it needs. Electrical power, videotape, gas for the vans, spare parts for all the equipment, paper, toner, all kinds of things that come from outside the city. To get them the station has to buy them and for that it needs money. That money is in the bank and the bank is closed because you shut it down. Right now we're using credit, but credit has limits. Once we hit those limits, the station will have to shut down, too. Actually, everything will shut down because the supermarkets will run out of credit. They won't be able to get food to sell and if people can't buy food, they'll have to leave." She saw his eyes flick to her right. She glanced that way and saw a big dim shape which she recognized as Minion's mechanical body, although the fish himself wasn't visible. _I'll bet Minion is the one who gets the food in. Did he mention something about pickings being slim?_ She kept speaking. "Maybe that's what you want, to make everybody leave the city, but I thought maybe you would miss the news."

He seemed to ponder this for a moment, staring into space. Then he rose.

"Very well," he said. "You didn't use what you know to humiliate me in the eyes of the whole city, so I will do as you request. Your cameraman is still out there, isn't he? In twenty minutes I shall make an announcement from here. Have him set up for it. I'll instruct the brainbots to let him through."

As soon as she was out of the building, he summoned a brainbot and told it that, for this one night only, the man accompanying Roxanne Ritchi was to be treated as she was treated. The brainbots were all networked wirelessly; to instruct one was to instruct them all. Then he went to Minion and pushed the sequence of buttons that powered up his suit. The castle rose with his henchfish in it. Minion blinked blearily, but didn't complain. He was used to being awakened at whatever hour inspiration happened to strike his blue boss.

"Yeah, sir, what's up?" He glanced out the window as he wriggled free of the castle. "What happened to the museum?"

"I destroyed it, but that's not what's up. I'm going to make an announcement to the city and I need you to help me get ready." He explained quickly about Roxanne's visit, the station, the banks.

"I dunno, sir. I mean, we're villains. Should we even be thinking about this?"

"I think it's time we did. It's our city now, after all. Shall I wear something that's here, or shall I have the brainbots fetch one of the more elaborate outfits from the lair?"

All the time that they were getting him ready, another train of thought rolled through his head. _So this is the way she's going to play it. She's not going to mention what I said outside the museum, but she's already presuming on it. She came right into City Hall and... was that so bad? So what if all she did was discuss economics? She came. By choice. If I play this right, I might get her to come again. Perhaps every night. What would that be like, to see her every night, not on the news, but in person? It would be more than I ever dared hope for. What a difference her presence made! I feel like things are worth doing again. Maybe that's what I've been suffering from: a shortage of Vitamin R. _

By the time Roxanne led Hal into the mayor's office, Megamind and Minion's body were both gone. Hal's eyes bulged at the sight of all the loot, but then he fell into tech mode, setting up lights and planning camera angles. Once the lights were on, they could see that the door frame was scorched and that the spiked sign on the desk said **Megamind, Evil Overlord**.

Five minutes before his stated announcement time, Megamind entered the mayor's office by a side door, wearing his usual tight black outfit with the blue lightning bolt up the front, black leather gloves with spiked cuffs, and a cape with a popped collar and a spiked black leather yoke. He was made up for the camera. _Where does he get blue face powder?_ Sitting in the big swivel chair, he glanced around with a practiced eye.

"All set up?"

"Y-y-yeah," replied Hal, who had started shaking violently as soon as Megamind had come into the room.

The blue alien glared at him. "If you can't hold the camera steady, get a tripod."

Hal nodded and sprinted for the van, which he had driven up to the bottom of the stairs.

"Is that where you're going to stand to introduce me, Ms. Ritchi?" She was in front of the desk, near the left corner, more or less where Minion's body had stood when she'd first come in.

"If that's okay with you," she replied.

"It's fine."

Hal came back with the tripod, set it up, mounted the camera on it and aimed it at Roxanne. She took a breath and composed herself.

"Three, two, one," he said.

"This is Roxanne Ritchi, reporting from City Hall. The Evil Overlord has an announcement to make." She looked at Megamind and the camera panned until it focused on the blue figure behind the desk.

"It is my will," he said, "that the banks should reopen and normal commerce should resume. Tomorrow morning by ten I expect an armored car from each of the banks to be here, with paperwork to show what it is entitled to. I do not expect any show of nerves, nor any impulses to foolish bravery, on the part of any drivers or guards aboard these vehicles. Furthermore, I am imposing a one-month ban on bank robberies to allow the economy to recover. Carry on with your lives. That is all." He made the 'cut' gesture.

Hal stood back. "Y-y-you want me to send this right from the van?"

"First, let me see it there," Megamind replied, pointing one black-gloved finger at the screen on the desk. Hal connected it with a patch cord and fiddled with knobs for a minute. The screen lit up Megamind's face. He didn't invite Roxanne or Hal to come around the desk to watch it with him, and they didn't quite dare ask. She wondered how the viewers, used to the wildly expressive pre-Overlord Megamind, would react to this calm and serious presentation.

When it ended, he said "Perfect. You may send it now. Ms. Ritchi," he continued while Hal detached the cord, picked up the camera and tripod as one piece and fled from the building. "Please see that all the bank presidents get personally notified of this, and I don't mean by leaving messages. Someone must speak to them in real time, even if it means rousting them out of bed." She nodded. "When do you expect to dine tomorrow?" The question was so unexpected that she had to think a moment.

"About seven-thirty, I guess. Why?"

"There's a very nice dining room on the second floor. I can have Minion make dinner. Would that be acceptable to you?"

"Dinner with you at seven-thirty tomorrow?"

"And Minion. We would like to talk more about the city."

"Um, okay. I'll, ah, I'll make sure these phone calls get made and I'll see you tomorrow night."

"Until then."

As soon as she was outside the building, she heaved a huge sigh of relief. Dinner with him _and_ Minion. She had been afraid, for a second there, that he was going to initiate some kind of romantic pursuit. He might still do that, but he didn't seem to want to push it just yet.

Hal finished stowing the gear and slammed the rear door of the van.

"Well, Hal, we survived."

"Yeah, we survived. Let's get out of here, though, just to make sure. Those flying bear trap things make me nervous."

They got in the van. He didn't really relax until City Hall was out of sight. While he drove, she called their boss. He was ecstatic about the announcement. It had already run once, breaking in on regular programming. Now that KMCP had its scoop, he had made the decision to share it with the other local stations so that it would go out on every channel. She told him about the other part of the agreement, the one about calling the presidents of all the banks. There were two interns in the newsroom. He got them started looking up phone numbers and calling. He said she and Hal could call it a night.


	2. Chapter 2

"Minion, I think this is the best fish I ever had." Roxanne, Megamind and Minion were in the conference room in City Hall, sitting together at one end of the long table. A loaf of French bread, a red cabbage cole slaw and a bowl of new potatoes completed the meal. She was amazed at the sheer quantity that Megamind put away, and astounded at the way Minion ate, dropping forkfulls through the hatch at the top of his dome, then swimming up to it and biting like an ordinary fish eating fish food. Her training before the camera, in remaining unflustered no matter what was going on around her, was being tested to its limit.

"It's yellow perch, Ms. Ritchi," replied Minion. "There's nothing like it. When the lake warms up in August, I like to go in and get them myself. These we got off a fishing boat near Milwaukee."

"We had to go to Milwaukee for most of these ingredients," Megamind added. "I'd never have guessed that the shortages of them here were a result of the banks being closed, until you informed us. Which brings me to the topic I asked you here to discuss. I seem to have acquired a city without truly understanding what sort of thing a city is. You seem to have some knowledge of the subject, and you are bold enough that I believe I can count on you to tell me the truth rather than trying to guess what I want to hear. So tell me: if a city is like a machine, then is money like its fuel, or is money more like a lubricant that keeps everything moving?"

"Hmm. Let me think about that a minute." She spent the minute making more perch disappear. "Okay, I think you have the wrong metaphor. The city isn't really like a machine. It's more like a living body. The people in it are like its cells and money is like water. It's the basis of all the other body fluids. It brings in nourishment. It takes away waste. It connects the different organs with each other, so they can each perform their function. The body has a little water stored, so it can go without for a little while, but if it goes too long without water, it dies."

"So the stored water is like credit," he finished. "And that would make robbers a kind of parasite." He put his elbows on either side of his plate, steepled his fingers (this would make the second time she'd seen him without gloves) and rested his long sharp chin on the tips of his thumbs as he frowned in concentration. After a moment, he sat up, pulled his elbows in and resumed eating, although the frown stayed on his face. "I don't like this. It implies that the city, even though it is my city, has to be good if it is to survive."

"Well, yeah, that's kind of the definition of good. It's whatever helps the city survive and prosper. Sort of. I mean, that's an oversimplification, because the city has to contribute to the survival and prosperity of the country and the species and the ecosystem, because it depends on those larger entities." Megamind put his elbows back on the table, his chin back on his thumbs. _What is good? he wondered. What is evil? I never thought such grand philosophical questions would have direct application to my existence and yet here I am, in the one situation that could have brought me to call into question the entire understanding by which I have lived my life._ He spoke. "Are no living creatures evil, then? Sharks, spee-i-ders, disease organisms?"

"Those are predators. They play an important role in the ecosystem. There have been cases where the predators have all been removed from an island ecosystem and the prey species multiply until they overwhelm their food supply and then they all starve."

"Ms. Ritchi, I didn't know you took an interest in the biological sciences."

"I do when they make the news. What I just told you is from an interview I did with one of the activists trying to reintroduce the wolverine."

"I remember that one. Extremely bearded fellow, looked like he was basing his personal style on that of his four-legged cause. But I don't remember him saying anything like that."

"What got on the air was the three minutes the editors liked best out of a half-hour interview. He's a professor of ecosystem science and he insisted on giving me the Overpopulation 101 lecture." As they talked about her work, she noticed that he was relaxing, letting go of whatever internal process was stressing him out. It was exactly the sort of conversation they'd have sometimes when there was a delay in the kidnapping-and-rescue process, when he would quit playing the villain for a while and something like a normal personality - actually a pretty interesting one - would show up. They talked about the news, and about ecology and economics and cities, for another half an hour. Then a brainbot towed a waiter's cart into the room with a pineapple upside down cake and conversation had to be suspended.

Roxanne finished her dessert before the other two and excused herself to visit the ladies' room. In rising from the table, she turned toward a corner of the room she hadn't really noticed before. There on the floor, leaning against a jade Buddha, with a folded medieval tapestry flopped partly over both, was Van Gogh's _Starry Night_. She stopped, feeling a sudden ache in her chest at the way this painting, which she had loved ever since she was a child, was being treated by her alien hosts.

"Is something in that corner upsetting you, Ms. Ritchi?" Megamind rose from his seat, drawing his ray gun. "I'll destroy it all."

"What? No! Stop!" She stepped quickly between the Evil Overlord and the corner. "The _Starry Night_ is my favorite. I'm just sad that it's not getting respected."

"Oh. Well, if you like it, then it's yours. Where would you like the brainbots to deliver it?" She felt a moment of shocked and fearful wonder at the idea that she could have the_ Starry Night_, that he could just give it to her. Then her common sense reasserted itself.

"The City Gallery."

"But that wouldn't look right. It would look like I was giving it back."

"Giving it back to who? It's your gallery, and it's the best place for the art works. The staff there knows how to take care of them. Just remind everybody that it's yours, if you're worried about your reputation."

Megamind furrowed his considerable brow for a moment as he digested this idea. Then, gradually, a rather frightening smile spread across his face, a smile with mischief in it.

"Minion, do you remember that room with the blueprints of all the public buildings? Was that here, or in the Hall of Records?"

Minion paused to swallow a mouthful of Maraschino cherry before answering. "It's right upstairs, sir."

"Then, when you're finished, could you go up and find the ones for the City Gallery? I'm feeling creative."

"No problem, sir."

Roxanne took extra long in the bathroom, just to get her composure back. That last conversation with Megamind had given her the Oh-my-god-what-have-I-done feeling three times in less than five minutes. What could she say to head off any more of his over-the-top ways of showing his affection? At the same time, a little voice from her past was intruding: the training in etiquette that she got from her mother. Being a dinner guest (even if not quite an entirely 100% voluntary dinner guest) created a social obligation. She now owed Megamind and Minion a dinner. And what was she going to do about that?

When she got back to the dining room, the dishes were gone and the blueprints were spread out over the table, with the two aliens leaning over them.

"How's it going?" she asked. "That is such a cool building."

"Yes, we certainly don't want to damage any of the coolness." Megamind had a sheet of the mayor's letterhead paper over the area of blueprint that showed the front door of the gallery and was drawing something, a sort of gate with a vaguely Southeast Asian sort of crest on top.

"You know," she said. "There are books about gallery design."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and magazines. The head curator probably has some in his office, or in the gallery library."

"Hmm. I want to go back to Evil Lair anyway; it's got a proper drafting table set up. We can swing by the gallery on the way there. Ms. Ritchi, would you like a ride home?"

In the Invisible Car, moving through the dark streets, she finally found the words she'd been groping for in the bathroom. "Listen, Megamind, just so you know, I don't really like extravagant gifts. What I would like is if you and Minion could come to my place for pizza this Saturday. I'm not much of a cook, but I know where to order."

Megamind's face opened up for a moment in an expression of amazement. _Has anyone ever invited him for pizza before? _

"We shall be delighted," he replied. "Does that mean Russo's?"

"Yeah. How do you know about Russo's?"

"Ms. Ritchi, I am one of the original investors in Russo's. Antonio Russo was one of the men who raised me. When he got out of MCPCG, he didn't want to go back to being a hit man. Instead, he wanted to use the recipe for his grandmother's deep dish pizza, which, as he tells it, was legendary in Little Sicily when he was a boy, to start a pizzeria. So his old don found some cash and I found some cash and some cousin of his found the place and Russo's was born. Started out laundering money, too, but after a while the don got so attached to Uncle Antonio's main product that he didn't want to risk having it shut down in a sting, so it's now a completely legitimate business, entirely suitable for the tender consciences of good people like yourself. Here we are." They pulled up outside her building. "Seven-thirty Saturday?"

_He's still teasing me for being good_, she reflected as she waved to Dean, the night doorman, and got into the elevator._ It's really just like when he used to kidnap me, except without the ropes and the spray and the pseudo-menacing devices. _

_And without Metro Man. Damn. Good thing I remembered that he's a murderer. I was almost starting to enjoy myself there._

That was Tuesday. She figured that until Saturday her life would be as alien-free as any other citizen's, but during breakfast on Friday, Minion called her. "We need your help, Ms. Ritchi. Can we come by and get you in about fifteen minutes?"

"What do you need my help for?"

"It's better if we explain in the car."

"Okay. Make it half an hour. I just got up."

As soon as Minion was off the phone, she called her boss and told him she was going to be late because the Evil Overlord requested her presence. He said it would be okay and told her to keep her eye out for anything newsworthy.

When the Invisible Car pulled up, Minion was driving and Megamind was in the back, as usual. He was wearing something she hadn't seen before: not a cape that only covered his back but a cloak that wrapped around him completely, made of black leather, with a collar that came up about to his earlobes and had small spikes covering the entire outside. He had the leather wrapped closely around him like a blanket. _Over his nightclothes again?_ But on his feet were boots, the kind he usually wore for those kidnappings when he expected to appear on video but not be seen in person.

"Ms. Ritchi," he said. "Always a delight to see you." And he looked delighted. No, more than that. He looked relieved, as if he'd been afraid of her not being there.

"So. What's this problem that you need my help with?" she asked as the car pulled into traffic.

"Dreams that come true," he said, the smile falling off his face. "You humans are always writing about them, putting them into song lyrics and so forth. What do you do when you've got a bad one trying to come true on you?"

She was perfectly nonplussed. What kind of bad dreams did the Evil Overlord have, and what did he mean when he said one was trying to come true? "I need more specifics," she said.

Megamind frowned into the back of Minion's seat for a moment before replying.

"All right. Here it is. I dreamt that he spoke to me from the roof. He said that my punishment would be different this time. He said that everything I loved or enjoyed or delighted in would be taken away from me and only its empty shell, its outward appearance, would be left to mock me. And when I awoke, it was starting to come true. Evil Lair, my inventions, Minion's presence, all empty. But he hasn't touched you yet, and so I am not utterly without hope. Tell me. What do you know of this phenomenon?"

In fact, she did know something. The world drained of pleasure, that was almost the textbook definition of depression. And, as bad as the exuberently irresponsible Evil Overlord has been for the city, a depressed Evil Overlord would probably be worse._ You don't want the guy with the explosives and the ray guns to be depressed._

"This roof, where you heard the voice coming from," she asked. "Is it a real place or a dream place?"

"It's the real roof of Evil Lair."

"Let's go there."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence and then Minion spoke. "Er, we don't have the bag with us. Or the spray."

"Oh, for heaven's sake. Look. I'll close my eyes. Can you trust me that much?"

"You are a nosy reporter" Megamind responded. "You have a powerful drive to find things out. How could we ask you go to against your nature like that?" As he spoke, he was taking off his gloves. They were spikeless, went above his elbows and fastened there with buckled straps. By trapping the fingers of each with the buckle and strap of the other, he improvised a blindfold. "Face me, please." As he leaned forward to place the blindfold on her head, she saw inside the cloak enough to know that he was wearing his usual skin-tight black-with-blue-lightning-bolt costume. No pajamas this time. He settled it over her eyes, pulled something at the side of her head, and it was on, the fine leather almost molding itself to her skin. _Well, so much for my eye make-up._ "There. How does that feel?"

"Fine."

"Good. Make it quick, Minion." The motor roared.

She intended to count left and right turns, but she was pretty sure Minion made some extras, just to confuse her. The moment they parked, she had the blindfold off. She wanted at least a glimpse of Evil Lair before they made her put it back on, or found the bag. But they did neither, so she was free to gaze around at the two parked hoverbikes, the Spider Bot, the wall of screens, the control panels and, as she got out, a cloud of brainbots just gathering around Megamind. He didn't talk baby talk to them, didn't throw a wrench for them, didn't smile. After a moment, he reached for one of them, pulled it close, and held it inside the cloak, the way a small child would hold a teddy bear. At the far end of the room was a red curtain. She itched to run and see what was behind it, but Minion stepped up and took her elbow in a very firm steel hand.

"This way, Ms. Ritchi." All three of them (four if you count the brainbot) went to a square of rusty steel flush with the concrete floor, with a single control arm on a stand poking out of it. Minion worked the control arm. Red-painted railings rose around them and the platform began to move. A square panel in the ceiling above them moved aside. They rose through the hole it left.

The fake observatory appeared just as she'd seen it last, except that the power seemed to be out. Dust covered the control panels, the screens, the empty hostage chair... ...the skeleton with the burned cape still tied to it.

"You kept it!" she shouted, enraged, as she pulled out of Minion's grip. "You bastards. Why couldn't you at least return his remains to his family?" She ran to the center of the room and knelt beside the bones. "No wonder you're having nightm-" In mid-word, she noticed the little dark orange spots at the joints of the hand near her knee. She looked closer. A skeleton stripped in an explosion would be held together with remnants of tendons, which tend to be tougher than other flesh. This skeleton was held together with steel pins. The fake observatory wasn't weather-tight. The pins had been rusting in the moist air coming in off the lake, making rust spots at the attachment points of each pin. "What did you do?" She rose, turning, her voice husky with a combination of disgust and fury. "Did you clean the bones off and pin them together and arrange them here like some, some... museum exhibit?"

Both alien faces looked utterly blank and slightly confused. "We have touched nothing since you were last here," said Megamind. He stepped closer, slowly, clutching the brainbot tighter, his body language showing that the skeleton gave him the creeps.

"Bullshit," she answered.

Neither of them responded. Minion still stood on the elevator platform. Megamind came up beside her without looking at her, crouched down and looked where she had looked, the black leather of the cloak pooling on the floor around him. Suddenly he flung the white cape aside. The floating ribs were held on with rusting wire.

"There's bullshit here, all right," he said, and the fear was gone from his tone and his posture. "But it's not our doing. Think back to that moment when this object of horror came flying in. Remarkable how intact it was. Didn't lose so much as a toe bone. That's because it had these pins holding it together even then." The blue alien rose abruptly. "It was fake. If any of us had had the presence of mind to notice, it would have been obvious, but we were all caught up in the emotions of the moment." He turned. "So he's had, what? Five weeks to cover his tracks?"

"About that, sir," said Minion. The fish was frowning as if he were still having trouble with the idea, but was still answering automatically.

"Wait a minute." Roxanne was still not completely over her indignation. "You seriously expect me to believe that the most powerful, wealthy, influential, beloved individual in the city would fake his own death and just... run out on us?"

"Oh, I know better than to expect you to believe anything, Ms. Ritchi. I expect you to use your powers of observation and deduction, as you so admirably have just now, to show us what to believe." He held out the brainbot he'd been clutching a moment before. "You. Pick up that -" he pointed to the skeleton "- and follow me." Letting it go, he returned to stand beside Minion.

"But why?" she argued. "Why would he do a thing like that?" Behind her, the brainbot gripped the skeleton by its pelvis and lifted.

"Pride, Ms. Ritchi. He'd rather be remembered as having fallen honorably in battle than admit that he was aging out of the superhero role and he hadn't recruited and trained a replacement for himself, as heroes are expected to do. He was going to have to leave the city in my hands at some point, so he did what I suppose he thought of as a favor to me." The brainbot with the skeleton hanging, bent double, from its claws, floated over to them. The white cape hung down behind Megamind, almost to the floor. "He made me look so powerful that I haven't had challenges from other supervillains. Spared the city some potentially deadly battles, I suppose. Coming?" She'd rather have taken the stairs, just to get some distance from them, but she didn't know whether there were any. She joined them on the platform and it began its descent.

"I still think it's more likely that you planted that fake skeleton."

"On the assumption that one day I shall come to trial for this and need to prove my innocence? Come now, Ms. Ritchi. I have never pled innocent to anything, even if the possibility of a trial were not extremely remote."

"I'm thinking more about the court of public opinion. That's the whole point of showing it to me, right? Because I'll get it on the news."

"Oh, I see. The skeptical reporter needs more than this to be convinced. All right. What would convince you?"

"I'd need to see him. Speak with him. Touch him. I know you can do amazing things with light and sound, so I'd need more tangible proof."

"So our next step is to find him." Megamind smiled a grim smile. His eyes shone. "The game is over and a new game begins: hide and seek." The elevator stopped, level with the floor of the lair. "Minion, see Ms. Ritchi home. I'm going to assume that, while the skeleton is not real, the cape is, and see if I can recover enough biological detritus," (he pronounced it _det_-rit-us) "to program into the sniffer brainbots." He started off toward a section of the lair where counters were filled with oddly-shaped glassware and the occasional microscope.

"You have brainbots that track by scent?" Roxanne asked.

The Evil Overlord turned back for a moment, smiling over his shoulder. "How do you think we found you all those times when you weren't considerate enough to be home for a kidnapping?"

"That's why you never washed the bag."

"Precisely." Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a spray can being shaken. "Minion, if you dose me with that stuff, the invitation for Saturday is off." There was a moment of stand-off. Then Megamind took off the leather cloak and handed it to her. "You can put this over your head when you get in the car. It blocks light very effectively." She took it. It was heavier than she expected. "See you Saturday?" She nodded.

"This way, Ms. Ritchi," said Minion behind her. She turned and let him lead her back to the currently-visible Invisible Car. He had her sit in front. She had him wait until she repaired her make-up and arranged the cloak carefully. The blue lining was satin, not likely to mess up her hair, and it stood away from her body, at least until Minion fastened the seat belts so that they pinned her arms. Riding in darkness, surrounded by Megamind's smell of leather, machinery, and the body of a not-quite-human male, she went over in her mind this completely unexpected turn of events. She didn't believe for a moment that Metro Man was still alive, but she had enough sense to consider explanations that didn't involve the whole thing being set up to fool her.

The car stopped. Minion unstrapped her and lifted off the cloak. They were in front of the KMCP building.

"Minion," she asked. "Did you switch the skeletons?"

The fish sighed. "No, I didn't, Ms. Ritchi. I don't know why you'd think I did."

"Megamind was tearing his guts out over having killed Metro Man. Maybe you decided to spare his feelings by convincing him that he didn't do it."

"Wow. Ms. Ritchi, I think you have a more devious mind than either of us."

"So you didn't even think about it?" Her voice dripped skepticism.

"Actually, if I were going to try to fool him, I wouldn't pull a trick that was that easy to see through."

"Maybe you figure he doesn't want to see through it." Minion didn't answer, just gave her an _Oh, come on_ look. "He's acting like he wants it to be true. Otherwise, why would he be so eagar to convince me of it and have me convince the city?"

"So he'll be challenged."

"What?"

"He's itching for a fight. That's half his problem. He can't fight humans. They break too easily. And he found out a long time ago that nothing he builds himself will give him a real challenge, and that includes stuff that he builds and I operate. He needs a super to go up against. So, yeah, he hopes to convince you so you'll convince the world so some super out there, on either side of the line, will think they can take him. But that doesn't make it not true."

The fish really seemed sincere, and it made sense that Megamind was that kind of adrenaline junkie. But her job was waiting for her. She could dig for the truth in this particular mystery later.

"Why don't we continue this discussion tomorrow night?" she replied, opening the door.

"See you then, Ms. Ritchi," he said as she got out.


	3. Chapter 3

Her boss was disappointed that she wasn't bringing in a hot new story.

"Yet," she finished, trying to reassure him, but she didn't want to use anything she'd just seen. Not yet. Not until there was more to it.

More came during her dinner break. She wasn't having dinner; she was using the time to try to make up the work she hadn't gotten done because of being late getting in. Her cell phone gave out a ringtone she knew she hadn't added to it: "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. She answered without checking the number or saying hello.

"You fucked with my phone during a kidnapping? You've got some nerve."

"I know it was a little out of line, Ms. Ritchi," said Minion, "but would you put it in video mode? There's something the boss wants you to see."

She had a momentary temptation to just hang up, and to add the number to her banned list, but curiosity won out. She did as the fish asked and saw, on the screen in her hand, a scene in Simons Park, along the promenade: a group gathered around a bearded man playing an acoustic guitar. He wore an oversized slouch hat, an open trench coat, a grey tee shirt with Metro Man's large M logo on it (every downtown tourist shop sold them) and jeans and boots. Instead of the sounds normal for the scene, she heard Megamind's voice.

"Are you there, Ms. Ritchi?"

"I'm watching."

"Good. I'm going for a close-up." The camera focused in on the musician. "Notice how much taller he is than the rest of the crowd. Notice his eyes." They did look like Metro Man's eyes. Furthermore, she knew the superhero had played guitar. He'd specifically asked her not to reveal that little piece of personal information. _"Remember the interview when I mentioned that the colors of my costume were chosen because they're the colors of a bald eagle's plumage and eyes? I got a deluge of eagle art, eagle toys, eagle memorabilia of every kind. It's tapered off since then, but it's never really stopped. I still get at least one eagle gift every week, from random citizens. I don't want to start a guitar deluge on top of it."_ Still, she wouldn't be surprised if Megamind somehow knew about his rival's hobby, knew that she knew, and chose to use that knowledge to manipulate her.

"Nice Photoshopping," she said. "It really looks like him, but seriously. Wayne Scott, busking?"

"This is live, Ms. Ritchi," Megamind's voice replied. "We're at the edge of Simons Park, filming from the Invisible Car. You can come down and see for yourself. Mingle with the crowd. Hear his voice. Reach across that cash-filled guitar case and touch him. The wind is from the southwest, if you want to allow for his sense of smell."

She felt manipulated, but she knew she couldn't stay away. "I'm on my way," she said and hung up. It was only two subway stops, and rush hour was starting, so trains were frequent. While she rode, she cleaned out the memory on her phone, set it to Record and slid it back into her pocket; it would pick up the sounds around her for the next two hours.

In twelve minutes, she was at the north entrance to the park. She approached gently, going with the crowd, as if she were just out for a stroll. At the same time, she was racking her brains for ways that Megamind could have set this up. Hired an actor from out of town to impersonate Wayne? If so, how would she expose the impersonation? What did she know about the real Wayne that Megamind wouldn't know and therefore wouldn't tell the actor? What questions could she ask? Then she got close enough to hear the song he was playing: "Free Bird" by Lynard Skynard, a great guitar piece and the theme song of the commitment-phobic runaway male. She'd always hated it, both for that reason and because, in the original, the lead vocalist constantly flirted with going off key. But this vocalist really was going off key a couple of times every verse. It set her teeth on edge. Suddenly another way of testing the impersonation occurred to her: bust something across the musician's head and see if it hurt him.

The crowd was thicker now than it had been when she'd seen him on her phone. Only his hat and the upper half of his head were visible. She stepped off the sidewalk, onto the grass, going around behind him. She discovered that she wasn't the first. There was a boy there, maybe twelve or thirteen, quietly sliding up behind him. As she watched, the boy crouched, made a quick grab into the guitar case, turned and ran a couple of steps, and stopped, looking with amazement at his empty hand. After a few seconds, he fell forward as if he'd been kicked from behind. The musician didn't miss a note, but the skirts of his trench coat moved a little, as if a gust of wind had ruffled them, although there hadn't been any gust. Superspeed. She'd seen Metro Man do things like that during battles. But this, too, could have been faked; the child thief could be an actor as well, maybe one with stunt training who could fall as if kicked by a foot moving too fast to see. The kid got up, rubbing his butt, and walked away.

She stood there dissecting the scene through the rest of the song. When it ended, the musician gave a slight bow in response to the applause, then went right into the next song, an instrumental blues number, not pausing to gather up the money and tuck it away in an inside pocket as a real busker would in these high-crime days. Did that mean the musician had the confidence of the superpowered, to be able to deal easily with any attempt to take it away from him, or did it mean that he was being well paid by the Evil Overlord to behave as if he had such confidence? What if she showed herself, spoke to him? Megamind might have showed the actor videos of her so that he'd recognise her face and voice. What could she do that the Evil Overlord wouldn't have allowed for? _...it is not my intention ever to allow harm to come to you by my actions._ She could do what that kid did, or appeared to do at any rate, and see whether she ended up flat on her face on the grass. The problem with that was that at least some people in the crowd would have recognized her by now. There were certain things she didn't want to be seen doing, even in the pursuit of the truth, and attempting to steal from a busker's takes was pretty high on that list. Then she had it. She got out a pen and one of her business cards, wrote "Call me," and signed it "Roxie." Then she stepped up behind him, still from downwind, and slid the card into the pocket of his trenchcoat.

If she hadn't been alert for it, she wouldn't have noticed the fraction-of-a-second movement of the cloth, disappearing from around her hand, then returning, too quick to see, but she felt it. _He went into superspeed just long enough to find out what I was doing. It's him._ After the moment of satisfaction she always felt when she solved a mystery, there was rage. _The park is filthy, it's plagued with thieves, the city came close to total economic collapse and he doesn't care. He's out here playing his stupid guitar as if all this weren't his fault. If I had a gun right now, I'd shoot him, just to expose his irresponsibility to the world._ She wondered whether Megamind was still filming. If she could do something to Wayne, hit him with something hard enough to demonstrate his invulnerability, she'd have footage of it to use tonight.

The song slowed from the familiar blues rhythm into a fancy finale with a lot of ornamental notes and a concluding slide. There was more applause. "Thanks, citizens." Wayne said in a hoarse stage whisper. _Disguising his speaking voice._ "It's been a pleasure." He took off his guitar and held it by the neck, waiting for the last few donations to fall into his guitar case as the crowd broke up. She glanced around, looking among the piles of trash for something she could hit him with, something that would really hurt anyone other than him. All she saw was the usual thrown-away packaging.

As he bent to gather up his takes, she walked around so that she stood in front of him, but slightly off to one side. If Megamind was still filming from the same spot, she wanted to keep Wayne facing his camera so that the sound her phone was recording could be matched up with his lip movements.

"There had better be an amazing explanation for this," she said. He finished, tucked the money into his jeans and stood up. On his face she saw an expression she never expected to see there: embarrassment.

"Okay," he said. "Okay okay okay. You deserve the truth." And he poured it out: his loss of motivation in the abandoned observatory, his decision to fake his death, music as his true calling. He had even stolen the fake skeleton; he called it borrowing, but he obviously hadn't returned it. "You should come by some time," he finished. "Not the mansion, obviously, but my summer place out on the dunes. I'll play you some of my own stuff. You'll be the first to hear it."

Her blood boiled. "You're horrible!" she shouted. Before she knew what she was doing, she had her keys out and was flinging them at his head. They got him square in the eye. They might as well have been a handful of air for all the reaction he showed. "How could you do this?" Her can of pepper spray followed, bouncing off his face with a faint _clang_. "The people of the city relied on you and you deserted them!" Her compact shattered against his nose. "You left us in the hands of... him!" She gestured at one of the "No You Can't" posters with the Evil Overlord's face, distantly visible on the side of a building.

"Don't underestimate my little buddy," the ex-hero replied as he pulled out a bandanna and wiped her face powder off his mustache.

"Underestimate? Look at this place! It's a crime-riddled dump! He's vandalized half of downtown, looted the City Gallery, and he almost crashed the economy."

"On purpose?" His question brought her up short.

"Well, no, I don't think that was on purpose. He just didn't realize what would happen when he shut down the banks."

"And when he had you at his mercy and no one was coming to rescue you, what did he do to you?"

"Nothing. He had Minion take me home." She'd never admit it, but she'd felt a little insulted at that, even though at the same time she'd felt relieved.

"Has he ever deliberately tried to hurt anyone other than me?"

"Well... witnesses who've been dehydrated report that the experience is -"

"But they're fine afterward, right?"

She nodded.

"And I don't think he even meant to hurt me, not really. I was watching from the dust cloud above the observatory. That skeleton freaked him out. Then Minion got him back into his game headspace. He's been going through the motions of celebration ever since, but I bet when Minion's not there to buck him up, it's a different story." _...victory has turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life._

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that wherever evil exists, good will rise up to meet it." Wayne put his guitar in its case, shut it and picked it up. "It's taken me a long time to find my calling. Now it's time he found his. Don't be a stranger, Roxie." And off he went toward the subway station.

She glared after him for a moment, fists on her hips. Then she pulled out her phone and took it off Record. It rang immediately, "Enter Sandman" again.

"That was perfect," Megamind's voice pinged in her ear. "Minion is copying the tape for you now."

Once she got the tape back to the station, it was simple to upload the audio recording from her phone and sync the two together. She didn't tell her boss what she had. She just sent the synced version to his desktop and told him it was that hot new story he'd asked her for this morning.

She stood in the doorway of his office while he watched it, smiling expectantly. He was just as astonished as she expected him to be, but nowhere near as enthusiastic.

"Roxanne, this is fine work, both on your part and Hal's." She didn't enlighten him about who the real cameraman had been. "But we can't use it. I won't sully the memory of Metro Man."

"What? Frank, you were never afraid of going after sacred cows. You broke story after story about official corruption back when most of the city government, including some of our most respected leaders, were in Omar Jenkins' pocket. I studied those stories in college. Journalism students are probably still studying them. Where is that Frank Bonnin?"

"That Frank Bonnin was an idealistic young hellion who thought he'd never settle down. This Frank Bonnin is a happily married grandfather who is more concerned with the day-to-day livability of the city than with abstract moral principles. Besides, Omar Jenkins, for all his bloody-handed ways, never had the psychological hold on the city that Megamind does. These are dark times, Roxanne, and the people need the memory of their hero to sustain them."

"Uh-huh, and this has nothing to do with the way Megamind is likely to react when he sees this."

"You know we've given him rough treatment plenty of times. You've done some of it. He doesn't care what we say so long as we talk about him. But here's Wayne Scott, going to the extreme of busking in a public park in order to avoid revealing his survival by tapping his inheritance. You can talk to Peggy about that." Peggy Delmar was covering the legal battle over Wayne Scott's estate. "You may feel that he deserves the embarrassment this story will cause him, and I don't blame you, but the fact is that no power on Earth can force him back into his role as a hero. All we'll do is demoralize the citizens who idolized him, and they're already demoralized enough."

"No, Frank. That's not all. Metro City isn't a sealed bubble. When this news goes out, it goes out to the world. It makes Megamind look weak, and that raises the possibility that some other superhero will decide he can be brought down."

"Or some other supervillain worse than he is. No, Roxanne. The likelihood of gain for the city is too slim, the potential for disaster is too great, and the one certain result is a negative one. Put that footage in the archives. If the story breaks in some other way, then we might use it, but I won't be responsible for breaking it."

Roxanne strode away in a huff, in part because she recognized that Frank was right. She'd been fantasizing about Music Man besieged by crowds of ex-fangirls enraged at his betrayal, and it had blinded her to the wider repercussions of the story. And she did understand the principle involved. Suicides are always underreported because coverage of suicide increases the suicide rate. As a result, the public thinks that suicide is very rare, much rarer than murder, when in fact it's about three times as common. Responsible journalism sometimes means killing stories and misleading the public for their own good.

As for the Evil Overlord's reaction to Frank's killing the story, she decided to get that part out of the way. She called the number that had been left on her phone.

Minion answered. "Hi, Ms. Ritchi. When's the video going on?"

"It's not. My boss won't use it."

"Because it doesn't have sound?"

"It has sound. I recorded the whole conversation with Wayne on my phone. It's not very good sound, but it's understandable."

"Cool. So why won't he let it run?"

"He thinks it would be bad for the city."

"Huh. Let me put you on speaker so the boss can hear this."

A few seconds later, Megamind spoke, his voice made distant and echoey by the speaker-phone. "What seems to be the difficulty, Ms. Ritchi?"

"My boss has decided that exposing Wayne Scott's deception would, quote, demoralize the citizens who idolize him. He says the people need the memory of Metro Man to sustain them through these dark times."

"That superpowered oaf's reputation continues to thwart me even after his abdication. Well, what if we lean on this boss of yours? Make him aware of the cost of incurring my displeasure?"

"Scarier guys than you have been leaning on Frank Bonnin his whole career. It's never had any effect before."

"What? All right, now I'm insulted. Just who are these guys you regard as scarier than me?"

"Well, for starters, ever hear of Omar Jenkins?"

She was not prepared for the response she got. Both the aliens on the other end of the line shouted "Uncle Omar!" and burst out laughing.

Then Megamind's voice continued alone. "Very well, Ms. Ritchi. Uncle Omar in his heyday may very well have been scarier than I have yet succeeded in being. Who else?"

"Gaspare Santangelo."

"Uncle Antonio's old don. Another possibility I will allow. Who else?"

"Langdon Wayne."

"The name only rings a very faint bell. Who was he?"

"Lady Scott's uncle, and the most corrupt attourney general in the history of the city. Threatened to indict Frank on a trumped-up triple murder charge."

"Now I remember. The man was so un-scary that he ended up serving his time in MC House of Correction instead of MCPCG. Disallowed."

"Sir, I've got a suggestion."

"Yes, Minion?"

"Uncle Omar ruled a crime ring. A big one. Why don't we talk to him about how to rule the city?"

"You are absolutely right, you fantastic fish. We'll call him as soon as we're done talking to Ms. Ritchi."

Roxanne caught her breath in dismay. When Frank had called Jenkins "bloody-handed", he was not exaggerating. The idea of this legendary ganglord having input into the running of the city was genuinely frightening. There was only one way she could think of to have any chance of mitigating his influence: she needed to get to know him and learn his weaknesses.

"When you talk to him," she said, "invite him along for pizza tomorrow. I want to meet him."

"Now, that should be interesting, you and Uncle Omar in the same room. I look forward to it. As for the video, why don't we let that rest for the moment? If Wayne wanted to leave the city, he'd be gone by now. Since he's not, we have plenty of time to set up a proper revahnge."

"Oh, and Ms. Ritchi?" Minion added. "Can I have a copy of the final version of that video?"

"I'll have it for you tomorrow night."

Roxanne never told anyone, but that night she cried herself to sleep. When she had told the viewing public that Metro Man cared for "us", everyone in the city, with his super heart, she had really believed it. Now it turned out that being the city's hero had been just a gig to him. A role. A game. He had never cared. He had been pretending all along, and when he got tired of pretending he just walked away. She wept until her gut ached and her eyeballs burned. She woke up Saturday morning feeling hard and bitter and a little less angry at Megamind, who'd been played for a fool just like she had.


	4. Chapter 4

Eleven years before, in the movie _Ganglords_, the role of Omar Jenkins had been played by Denzel Washington. The real Jenkins was shorter than she expected, and not as handsome; his ears stuck out. Except for his white hair, he looked younger than he was. Not much exposure to the sun over the last few decades. He wore a fancy suit, grey with a black pinstripe, with satin lapels and pocket trim on the jacket, which didn't have buttons. It was designed to hang open a few inches, revealing a crisp white shirt and a brocade vest, blue with Chinese dragons embroidered in white.

"Excuse me if I seem overdressed," he explained as he came into Roxanne's apartment, "But for thirty-eight years I wore the ugliest clothes in the world, so I decided I'm never going out on the street without looking my best. Here. I brought a little something to have with our deep-dish." He handed her a long brown paper bag which turned out to contain a bottle.

"Spumanti?" she read from the label.

"It's like champagne but Eye-talian instead of French." Minion was behind him in Roxanne's kitchen, pulling down a vase from the top shelf while Megamind waited with a rather excessive bouquet containing flowers of several species, all blue.

"I've never had it," she said. "This will be interesting. Should we put it in to chill some more? I made a pitcher of martinis to drink while we figure out our order."

When the spumanti was in the freezer, the martinis poured, the order phoned in and the four of them seated around three sides of Roxanne's coffee table, looking out at the night cityscape, Megamind said "The topic I am hoping to discuss tonight is this: is it possible to rule a city evilly without destroying it, and if so, how can it be done? I have already heard Ms. Ritchi's take on the matter. Uncle Omar, I would very much like to hear yours."

"Well, Li'l Blue, my perspective is that, if you're gonna be a leader, and this city sure needs one, you got to be practical. You can't let the rules about good and evil get in your way. Like, back in the day, if I expected a gunman to risk his life carrying out my orders, I had to makes sure he knew that if he lost his life, I would take care of his family, his kids till they was grown, his woman till she found another man, and his mama for the rest of her life. On the day I went on trial, I was paying the bills for fourteen women and near' fifty kids, all from men who died for me, for my organization. And if you was to ask any of them women or them kids, Is Omar Jenkins good? They'd say, He's sure 'nuff good to us." This was an aspect of gang life that Roxanne had never heard about. "So what I say is, don't try to rule evilly," continued the old man. "Instead, aim to create a city where it's okay to be evil, and do whatever it takes to make that happen."

"Okay to be evil? I'm not sure what you mean," Megamind replied.

"Well, my organization was criminal toward the outside world. We ran every kind of dope, stolen goods, unregistered guns, illegal immigrants, backroom casinos, shakedown operations and every whorehouse in the city. We dodged customs even when the stuff we was moving was legit, just to get it into the country duty-free. We had a burglary ring that stole to order, a massive money laundering set-up, and almost the whole city government on our payroll. Pretty near every illegal way of making money that there is, we did it. But inside the organization, among ourselves, there had to be law and order. I was that law and the order was what I gave. I would not tolerate my men fighting among themselves. Wouldn't let my pimps abuse their whores. Wouldn't let a man get slack, spending too much time partying and not enough time training. I ran a tight ship, and that's a big part of why we got so successful."

"I heard you also shot anybody who cheated you." Roxanne couldn't help bringing it up.

"It's true, it's true. That's the way it's always been in the gangs. You let a man live after he skim from you, won't nobody respect you. Not that I ever like it, but a man does what he has to do." Jenkins finshed his martini with a sour expression on his face, then poured himself another. "So what you got to decide, Li'l Blue, is what you want this city to be toward the outside world. Then you do what you have to do to make it that way."

"Hmmm." The blue alien took a sip, then looked out toward the city while he swirled the liquid in his glass. There was quiet for a moment, interrupted by a knock at the door. "That will be our food," said Megamind. "Let me put it on my tab."

"Naw, naw, let me," said Omar. "I can't do much anymore, but I can sure treat a pretty lady to dinner."

"Cut it out, you pair of sexists," Roxanne argued as she opened the door. "I invited you, so I'm paying. If you want to pay, you have to invite me."

The spumanti was poured and everyone was helping themselves to pizza when she asked, "Mister Jenkins, what did you mean when you said the city needs a leader?"

"Call me Omar, please, Miss Ritchi. And what I meant was, we need somebody to undo the damage that Metro Man did."

"Damage?" She tried to keep the shock out of her voice, and knew she failed.

"Poor neighborhoods is usually lawless because the law enforcement don't care about crimes with poor victims. When I was starting out, I could kill, rob, shake down businesses, deal dope, anything I wanted, and the police wouldn't touch me so long as I only did it to people who lived in the 'hood. So in the poor neighborhoods was where you found the toughest, most practical, most resourceful people in the city. In a natural disaster, the poor know what to do way better than the middle class 'cause the middle class is used to standing around waiting for the authorities to do something, but the poor don't expect the authorities to care. Now, Metro Man was this rich white dude and the most powerful superhero on the planet. You would expect him to care the least of all, but he did care." Roxanne was careful to keep her face neutral. "No matter if a crime was against the lowest wino on the street, Metro Man would see it got solved and the perp got brought in. He got the city to fix the street lights and the call boxes so they worked like they did in the rest of the city, and he make the slum landlords fix up the buildings so they're not dangerous no more. He even cared about the criminals. Like if a man was what I call an economic criminal, where he hadn't got no real calling to it but only went into crime 'cause legit employment wasn't working out for him, Metro Man would help him find a legit job. If he couldn't find him nothing else, he'd take him on hisself, as a gardener at his mansion." Roxanne had done a feature on the award-winning gardens at the Scott mansion back when she was new at the station. Lady Scott had admitted that their perfection was possible only because her son had hired so many ex-convicts that the gardening staff was two or three times as large as what was usual for a property of that size. "And the result is, there ain't nobody under fifty in the 'hood knows how to get by in hard times. They're all shaking in their boots now, afraid that the trustees gonna downsize and throw all these men outa work."

"It's not just the staff at the mansion," said Roxanne. "Scott Industries is profitable, but it would be more profitable if it moved to some low-wage area like China or Mexico or even the South. Metro Man kept it here to protect the city from the economic troubles that have hit the rest of the region. There are eleven would-be heirs fighting to break his will. If they succeed, the company will almost certainly go public and the management will be obligated by law to run it solely for maximum profitability. Once it moves out, there will be a follow-on effect, with other businesses that depend on selling things to Scott Industries employees having to close their doors. We could end up as badly off as Detroit." She'd had a long talk with Peggy the day before.

"See, Li'l Blue," Omar continued. "This is one of those situations where the good thing is also the practical thing, the thing that's good for bad. It's in the interests of the criminal community that the citizens should be well off. If nobody in town's got any money, won't be nothing to steal and won't be nobody to buy stolen goods or dope or hookers or whatever you're selling. So if there's any way you can keep that company in town, you should do it."

"Actually, there is something I've been thinking of," replied Megamind, grinning. "Keeping the company in town was not its purpose, but it might have that effect. I was originally inspired by something Ms. Ritchi said about the city's dependence on the outside world. The more I reduce that dependence, the more freedom of action I have within the city." He leaned forward, clearly excited. "What if the price of electricity were to fall to a tenth or a twentieth of what it is now?"

"That would probably help," said Roxanne. "What have you invented, some new kind of power source?"

"Not exactly." He leaned back in his chair, pressing his hands together at the fingertips, which he spread out like a fan from the center of his chest. "What I was thinking of was repurposing the Death Ray." Now he leaned forward, one elbow on the table, pointing to his henchfish. "Minion found the original plans for Metro City Power's main plant and I've worked out what changes it would need so it could use, instead of however many thousands of gallons of petroleum it burns now, the Death Ray." The blue alien was gesturing and fidgeting as he spoke, his pretense of nonchalance wearing away under the pressure of his sheer enthusiasm over his own idea.

"Sir, the Death Ray is only designed for short bursts," Minion chimed in.

"Oh, I know we'll have to reconfigure, but I want to go over there and have a look around the plant. They've almost certainly made some changes since it was new, and I'll need to allow for those. Then you can go into space and modify the orbitals at the same time that the modifications to the plant are being done."

"Sounds great, sir."

"Minion loves going into space," the blue alien added. "So, Uncle Omar, Ms. Ritchi, what do you think?"

"I think if it works and it doesn't have dangerous side effects, it's great." Roxanne was genuinely impressed.

"I think it's fine so long as you can still use that Death Ray on your enemies when you need to," replied Omar. "But for keeping Scott Industries in town, I was thinking more along the lines of a change in ownership."

"You mean I should confiscate it?" asked Megamind.

"No, 'cause Scott Industries has got an established customer base, mostly outside the city, that don't trust you. A known criminal has got to be careful going into any legit business because of this trust thing. It's better if you can make what you want to happen, happen through blinds or fronts or through letting your associates do it. And you got some potential associates inside that company. They're trying to get their fellow employees to pool their money to buy it, to make it an employee-owned company. See, the employees who work there now, they do have the trust of the customers, so they're your best choice for local ownership. Their problem is, they ain't never gonna raise the money on their own, not with what this company would cost at the going price. So here's what you do: you wait till the company is committed to selling stock to the public, till they can't back out, and then you go on the news and you say that you won't let that company leave town, that you'll blow it all to Hell before you'll let it move out. The price of the stock will land on its ass, and then it'll be cheap enough that the employees can buy it."

"But what if it doesn't go public?" chimed in Roxanne. "What if some big investor like Warren Buffett steps in and buys it?"

"Oh, well, if it's individuals we're talking about instead of the market," replied Jenkins, "then you just lean on 'em. You might even get 'em to front for you, go through the motions of lending their money to the employees' association to buy it when, really, it'll be your money. If you got the money, I mean."

"I like it," said Megamind. "What are your thoughts, Ms. Ritchi? Are you willing to provide or withhold publicity as needed in order to keep Scott Industries in Metrocity?" _In other words, am I willing to be a party to a conspiracy to manipulate the stock market, an actual criminal conspiracy, for the good of the city? Only if I can't convince you of a better option._ "If you have the money to do this," she said, "then I would say don't let Scott Industries get anywhere near the market. Just buy it, or lend the employees the money to buy it, as soon as the court will allow. In fact, if you can buy out the heirs' interest before the trial starts, that would be best of all."

Omar frowned. "Can you do that, Li'l Blue, buy Scott Industries _and_ make them changes you talked about at the power plant? And who owns MC Power, anyway?"

"It's municiple, which means it's mine. And money is not an issue. I can buy Scott Industries and not even feel it."

"Damn." Jenkins shook his head. "You really do own the whole damn city. I just... it's just hard to get used to, that's all."

"It took me a while to get used to it, too, Uncle Omar. Now, tell me about these potential associates."

It turned out that Jenkins had researched these people. He spent several minutes describing the infant employee-ownership movement, including the names of the people heading up the effort. With his permission, Roxanne got out her phone and took notes

"Sir," said Minion as Omar finished up. "I don't see how this is doing anything different than Metro Man would do."

"The difference, Minion, is that Wayne would act openly, undermining the initiative of the populace and adding to his personal glory. We are going to act secretly and we're not going to just hand it to them. They're going to have to do something to get it. I'm not sure what yet, but it will be something that will require them to think and learn and take some initiative."

"Sounds like the standard application process for a grant or a large loan," Roxanne spoke up. "I know some people who work for a non-profit. When they apply for a big chunk of money, they have to produce a thirty-page document full of things like financial specifics and projections of need, information that's not easy to get. Then there are more hoops they have to jump through: interviews, inspections, certifications. They describe the process as hellish."

"Sounds like just the thing," said Megamind. "And if this is an established process, we might be able to work through an established organization. Can I depend on you to find me the names of suitable organizations, Ms. Ritchi, and find out how they might be approached?"

"Sure, and I'll write up these notes and pass them along to my colleague who's covering the legal fight over the Scott estate. I'll encourage her to interview these people and put a feature together. After the feature runs, then we can approach a granting organization, saying that an anonymous donor saw the feature and got inspired to make this grant and wants the organization to manage the process. Your name doesn't have to come into it."

"And one more thing, Li'l Blue. When you go over to that power plant, don't say nothing financial. You want the price of Scott Industries to stay low till you've got it where you want it, and if you talk about dropping the price of the juice, that'll make it rise."

"We have a plan," declared Megamind, practically bouncing out of his seat. "Minion, when we get back to Evil Lair, I want you to contact the power plant manager and the head engineer. Tell them we'll see them tomorrow at ten at the plant to talk about some changes I want to make."

"Will do, Sir. Want to come along, Uncle Omar? Ms. Ritchi?" The fish glanced at Jenkins and Roxanne.

"Naw," said Jenkins. "You and them power plant people will just talk a lot of talk that I can't understand."

Roxanne shook her head. "Bring me in when you're ready for publicity.". She had an agenda of her own. _They'll both be at the power plant. The lair will be empty except for the brainbots, and they ignore me. The fake observatory is still on the roof, so I can probably find it by looking at aerial photos. I want a look behind that red curtain._

Over gelato and biscotti at the coffee table, after the leftover pizza was in the fridge, Megamind told Jenkins about the fake skeleton, and Roxanne played the video from Simons Park.

The old man's reaction was vehement. "That low-down dirty son of a bitch! Fucking midlife crisis. Li'l Blue, if you can do it, I say run him down like the dog he is."

"That's the one thing I can't do, Uncle Omar. In all the years of our glorious rivalry, I've never been able to give him so much as a scratch. I can't attack his property because he's already given up everything. He has no surviving loved ones and adheres to no causes. What I can do, aside from having the brainbots run him out of the park next time he tries to play there, is erase his mark from the city and replace it with my own. He could be anywhere in the world, but he's here because it's familiar and he likes that. I intend to make it unfamiliar, to alter it beyond his recognition, to leave him with no place where he feels truly at home. That will be our revahnge." His listeners took a moment to digest this.

Roxanne spoke up. "Does that mean the trash on the streets and in the park has to stay?"

"The trash is not my doing."

"Tell you what happened there," said Jenkins. "When you shut down the banks, the DPW workers didn't get their pay no more, so they quit showing up for their jobs."

"So now that the money is flowing again," she asked, "they'll be back, right?"

"They should, but the Evil Overlord oughta remind 'em, just to make sure."

"Thank you, Uncle Omar. I'll make another announcement from City Hall."

"Do you want me there with a cameraman and a van again?"

"Not necessary, Ms. Ritchi. This isn't quite as urgent as the last one. I'll film it tonight with brainbots and send it to the station tomorrow morning. It can go out on the regular news broadcasts."

"I'll let the weekend station manager know to expect it."

"And, Li'l Blue, one more thing you should put in that video." Jenkins glanced at her with a calculating smile on his face. "Say that Miss Ritchi here is under your personal protection, so won't nobody mess with her."

"What?" Roxanne had just been silently congratulating herself on getting Megamind to agree to do something about the trash. Now she was taken aback all over again. She felt a momentary temptation at the prospect of a return to the days when nobody (except Megamind) messed with her because of her perceived special connection with Metro Man, but she put it aside. If Megamind told the whole city that she had some kind of special connection with him, it would kill her reputation for journalistic impartiality, not to mention getting her family and friends even more worked up than they already were. "Um, that's really nice of you, Omar, but I, um, I really don't want special treatment. Did you see that can I threw at Wayne? That was pepper spray. I've used it before and I'm actually pretty good with it, at least against criminals who don't have sniffer brainbots and an invisible car."

Jenkins looked offended. _If he were still the powerful ganglord he used to be, I'd be in real trouble right now._ Minion looked embarrassed; he appeared to have suddenly discovered something very interesting on the bottom of his tank. But Megamind rose from his seat on the sofa beside Minion with an expression of delight on his alien face.

"That's what we wanted, isn't it, Uncle Omar? Self-reliance, resourcefulness, courage!" He leaped over the coffee table. "...and a certain delectable ferocity. Remember what you were saying on the way over about the police, how they're useless for anything but traffic patrol?" In two steps was next to her chair. "Well, perhaps what we need isn't a better police department; it's a whole city of Roxanne Ritchis." As he said her name, he framed her face with his blue hands. And for the first time since she'd known him, Roxanne had no comeback.

"And how you gonna do that?" Omar sounded irritated. "Give 'em all free pepper spray? Won't change 'em, and it won't win you no popularity contest with the rest of the criminal element, neither." Megamind lowered his hands from Roxanne's face and turned toward him.

"Ah, but isn't the criminal element in danger of getting as soft as the law-abiding citizens got in Metro Man's day? At the same time, you're right, of course; giving people things is coddling them. They should have to do something for it, preferably something courageous, just to prove that they have what it takes to actually defend themselves." He whirled dramatically, his cape brushing against the edge of the coffee table, and stepped close to the window wall. "Ah, Metrocity," he intoned, looking out into the night. "Have you given away all your strength to your false hero? Did it vanish when he vanished, or is it in you yet? How might I call it forth from its long hybernation?"

"Start with the women," said Roxanne. "Women have this streak of cold-blooded practicality when it comes to safety, especially if they have kids. Start with the women and the men will run to catch up, just out of embarrassment."

Jenkins was still frowning. "Listen to your old uncle, Li'l Blue." Megamind turned to face him. "You're the leader of the criminal community in this city right now, and that's 'cause you give the criminal element more opportunity than they ever had before, but if you start encouraging the citizens to resist, you're taking away opportunity. Pretty soon the criminals gonna start thinking maybe they'd do better with some other leader, and the next thing you know, somebody gonna try and overthrow you."

"Good."

"What?!"

"Do you have any idea how bored I've been with no one to fight? All my advanced weaponry gathering dust in Evil Lair, all my grand plans for havoc and disruption obsolete. I just hope any attempt is serious enough to give me a real challenge."

Now it was Jenkins who seemed to be having an oh-my-god-what-have-I-done moment. "No, listen, Li'l Blue, I understand. You're young, you're hot-blooded, you want some action, but you got to be fighting the right people. Let me tell you about this city and the outside world, from a criminal point of view. It's all about smuggling. The lake is your friend, because it's easy to move on, hard to patrol, and it connects you die-rectly to the Canadian border. Once you got a regional organization established, you can use the Saint Lawrence to connect you to the Atlantic Ocean, and then you got the whole damn world to tap into. With Ronnie, here, on the team," Omar gestured at Minion, "you could bring underwater smuggling to where it's never been before. And once you're doing that, once this city is the place where dope comes in, and stolen art from museums in Europe, and all the things that is always profitable, then you gonna get the attention of the federal cops, the FBI and the DEA and the Coast Guard. You want a fight, boy, they'll give you a fight."

"Do you think they'll use helicopter gunships?" Megamind asked eagarly. "I've always wanted to go up against one of those."

"No!" Roxanne was on her feet before she thought about it. "Metro Man always used exactly the right amount of force to bring you to justice, never enough to do you permanent damange, but those federal cops use deadly force and they're not always in control of it."

The blue alien met her eyes with an unexpectedly vulnerable expression. "You are concerned for my physical safety?"

"Now, Miss Ritchi," said Jenkins before she could reply. "If I was you, I'd have a look at what my own walls was made of before I went throwing them stones."

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is, Li'l Blue, here, sent me a TV when I was still inside. I've seen you plenty of times on the news and I noticed how you like to get up real close to the action, even if it's dangerous. Makes great TV. I can see why you're tops in the news business around here, but sometimes I couldn't help thinking, if your mama was watching this, she must be about to throw a fit."

"Oh, God," said Roxanne, slumping back into her chair. "That's who I was just channeling."

"Uh-huh, and if she was to find out that you had a chance to be under the personal protection of the Evil Overlord and you turned it down?"

"At this point, I've got her worn down enough that all she does is roll her eyes."

"But I bet you can hear that eye roll over the phone." The remark was so silly and at the same time so spot-on accurate that she smiled in spite of herself. "Now, it ain't no bad thing that you had your objections," Jenkins continued, "because a man likes to know that a woman cares about him, but you know yourself that if we all listened to everybody who worried about us, wouldn't nothin' get done. Now, it's getting late and I'm thinking we should get on the road and let you get your beauty sleep. Thank you for a fine evening, and I'll be returning the invitation pretty soon." His expression to Roxanne was warm and cordial, but when he caught the eyes of his fellow guests, it was with the Parent Look, the one that says _Come along right now and don't argue_. It worked; Megamind and Minion, slightly confused, said goodnight to her and followed him out the door.

In the hallway, he maintained a testy and intimidating silence until they were in the elevator and its door was actually shut.

"Li'l Blue, I can't be-_lieve_ you said that."

"Said what, Uncle?"

Omar's voice went up into falsetto, doing a bad imitation of Megamind's accent. "'You are concerned for my physical safety?'" Then he dropped back to his normal voice. "You showed weakness! Never show weakness, especially in front of a -" He broke off. He'd intended to end with "bitch" to emphasize the need for masculine superiority, but found himself unwilling to use the word of Miss Ritchi.

"Of a good person, and an influential one," finished the Overlord. "I understand, Uncle, but I have found Roxanne to be extremely trustworthy in that regard. She is aware of my weakness where she is concerned and she has never let it influence her reportage."

"It's not her reportage I'm talking about here. It's her respect for you."

Minion interrupted. "After all the years we've been kidnapping her and putting her in scary situations even before we took over the city, I don't think this one little remark is going to put a dent in the amount of respect we've already got." He was careful not to say just how much respect he was talking about.

# # # # #

_I can't believe I said that!_ She'd been at her laptop, writing up a summary of the evening's conversation. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to use any of it, but she knew she had to record it or her journalistic training would keep her regretting it for years. She'd gone along fine through most of it, limiting the main text to the facts as she'd witnessed them and using the marginal notes feature to record her reactions and assessments. "J wants Mg to rebuild his old crime ring." "Mg just loves to plot for the sake of plotting. A plot to do good will satisfy him just as much as an evil plot." "J's attempt to put me under Mg's protection was clearly meant to make me dependent on Mg and therefore controllable." And so forth. Then she got to that moment, her own exclaimed "No!" and suddenly she was holding her head in frustration and shame at her own weakness. _He destroyed Metro Man, he took over the city and now he got me to care about him!_ As soon as she'd thought it, she took back that first bit. Metro Man's destruction was nobody's fault but Wayne's. At the thought of the city's runaway hero, she felt a burst of anger that cleared away the less comfortable feelings. With an act of will, she steeled herself against the caring. Megamind was evil. She'd treat him like she always treated the subject of an investigation: with a relentless determination to get to the bottom of things. And if there was any actual dirt to be found, so much the better.


	5. Chapter 5

Sunday morning was clear and a little warmer. After breakfast, she brought up the laptop again, backed up her document, then used the satellite view feature of Google Maps to find Megamind's lair. It wasn't far, close enough to walk, in fact. She got into workout clothes, tucked her good camera into a fanny pack and set the timer on her phone for eleven before sliding it into her pocket. Then she went out, just another citizen going for a morning run.

The building, when she found it, seemed to have no doors at all, but she knew he was all about disguise, so she started walking around the outside, touching the wall every few feet. Where she found the welcome mat that said "Secrit Entrance", she touched the wall and felt nothing, so she walked through it. Inside, she saw exactly what she hoped for: the inside of Evil Lair, just as she'd seen it two mornings before.

She ran to the red curtain. Behind it was an area of chalk boards, cork boards with many pieces of paper tacked to them, and strings from the ceiling with more papers attached to their ends. There was a drafting table with one side empty, like the cork board immediately behind it. _That's probably where the power plant stuff was, that he took with him._ On the other side, she recognised the blueprints of the City Gallery. There were sheets of calculations, maps of various neighborhoods, entire articles clipped out of magazines and printed off the Web, photos and drawings, mostly of buildings. It looked like he was redesigning the whole city. She spent a happy few minutes photographing it all.

The other thing she found, wandering the stacks of explosives and other necessities of mayhem was a pair of angled doors of the sort that usually led to basement steps. She opened them and found exactly that. She switched on the lights and went down. At the bottom was a very large indoor swimming pool, except it didn't smell like a typical swimming pool. More like the semitropical section of the Metro City Aquarium. Had the same background hum of industrial-size water filters, too. The air was warm. Just to her left, at the edge of the water, were a pair of complicated hydraulic devices as tall as the ceiling, each with two mechanical arms. The nearer one faced her with its arms bent so the hands were at the height of her shoulders. The further one faced the pool with its arms hanging into the water. Next to it was a duplicate of Minion's gorilla-robot body, but without the clear tank in its center. On second glance, it was also a little simpler than the body she was familiar with. An earlier model? She went closer and now she could see a cylindrical clear tank with various mechanical things attached to one side, held under the water by big suction cups on the ends of the arms. There was a round, nearly transparent hatch open at the top. The fish could swim into the tank and the machine could lift it up and set it in the body. She also saw plants in the water, smaller fish swimming, and occasional clusters of rock, as well as more machines, and a screen built into the wall of the pool about five feet down.

Up until now, Roxanne had been unsure how much of the the visual combination of robot, ape and fish that she was used to interacting with was essential to Minion and how much was equipment. Now she realized that the real Minion was just the fish. He got in and out of the robot body like getting in and out of a car, and when he got out, this pool was what he got out into. _To kick back after a hard day's henching, I suppose._ But it also had stairs going into the water and a floating chair and other things she couldn't imagine Minion using. On the wall to her right were a shelf of black towels and a row of hooks for clothing. _Megamind must join him in the water sometimes. Maybe every day. _She took a few more pictures.

She strolled away from the machine, keeping the pool on her left, looking through the doors on the right-hand wall. The first one led to a laundry room. The second led to a room with bronze tile walls, a shower and a Jacuzzi. She snapped photos and moved on. The third door was closed. She opened it and went in.

It was a small room, barely more than a walk-in closet. On one side were a chair and a desk with a two-screen computer system. On the other side was a... bed? Sort of a cross between a hospital bed and a dentists chair, with several metal "arms" sticking out from the far side, next to the wall, bent at their "elbow" joints so that they held their ends above the bed. On the end of one arm was a flat screen, currently showing a schematic of the bed with stylized arrows pointed at it from different directions. Roxanne touched the arrow under the head of the schematic bed, pointing upward, and it raised the head of the real bed. The arm with the screen was the only one designed to bring its end to chest level for a person lying on it. The others most easily brought their ends a little lower, and on those ends were a variety of... shapes. Oh.

This thing was a masturbation couch and those were sex toys. _Naturally Megamind would have tech for jerking off just like for everything else._

Does he watch porn, too? Is that what the screens on the desk are for? No. He'd get a crick in his inhumanly skinny neck. He'd want one on the ceiling.

She glanced up. _Yep. There it is, and it seems to be physically wired to the system on the desk. So if I turn on that system, it should show me what he's been watching._

Let's see what gets the Evil Overlord off.

Roxanne made herself comfortable at the desk and pressed the power button. The good news was, the system must have been on standby; half a dozen windows came up, the one on top showing a list with several columns. The bad news was that nothing in those columns bore any resemblance to English, or any other written language she'd ever seen. She didn't even see any numerals, and so far as she knew, everybody on Earth uses the same numerals. So this had to be the language of Megamind's home planet.

She clicked the line at the top of the list. A seventh window came up, filled the screen, and started to play a video. It had been made with high-end animation software that allowed the user to build animation on top of live-action video footage, with the merger so smooth that people unfamiliar with the technology were sometimes fooled into thinking it was all live-action. The opening was the Metro City skyline. Then the camera zoomed in, almost to street level. Normal city sounds came from the speakers. The most visible alteration was that all the people on the street had blue skin and huge bald heads. _Hmm. Okay. His fantasy starts in a city where everyone is like him._

The camera rose again, focused on a building with one half of its roof a story higher than the other. On the edge of the roof of the lower side were trees and shrubs in containers, so thick that they screened off the interior of the roof area. The camera kept rising until it was above the tops of the trees, then moved in over them. In the center of the roof was a pool of water, roughly oval, clearly made to imitate a natural pool. It was even surrounded by grass. Steam rose from it. In it, starkly visible against the dark grey of the bottom, was a nude blue body. A female one.

The camera closed in on her. She reclined, her head and shoulders on the grass that came to the edge, the rest of her submerged in the clear water. Close-up of her face, very relaxed, half-closed eyes an inhuman golden brown, and the spray of freckles across her cheeks. _Freckles?_ Roxanne paused the shot and assessed the face. It was distorted by the big scalp and the alien eyes, but the cheekbones, the nose, the lips, they were all hers. _He built his imaginary woman's face on mine?_ She was both creeped out and determined to see the rest of this. She clicked to continue.

The camera panned around the woman's face for a moment. Then, at the sound of a sliding door, she opened her eyes, turned her head, and the camera followed her gaze. Across the grass, just emerging from the higher side of the building, was Megamind in about the ugliest outfit she'd ever seen. It was a dirty light brown padded jumpsuit studded all over with zippers and sensors and random tech stuff she didn't know the names of. _Why on Earth..._ Then she realized where she'd seen that kind of thing before. It was a military flight suit without the insignia. The sensors meant the wearer was a test pilot. So this was the side of himself that he'd chosen to bring into his fantasy: not the spikes and leather of his public presentation, nor the lab coat of a scientist, but the man who uses dangerous machinery. She thought about how often his inventions went wrong; did he get off on their dangerousness?

The blue woman gave him a look of loving welcome, which he returned in kind. He went to the pool, sat down on the edge, spoke in the alien language. There was a couple of minutes' conversation. Roxanne couldn't understand a word, but the expressions of tenderness on the faces told their own story. The woman put her hand up to his cheek. It was her left hand, and a simple gold ring was visible on the third finger. _That isn't even universal for humans, much less for another species._ But it must have done something for him or he wouldn't have put it in. Megamind turned his face into her palm, closing his eyes as his mouth opened and he licked drops of water from the heel of her hand. She trailed her fingers along the hinge of his jaw, down his throat and over his collarbone. When she got to the zipper of his flight suit, she took hold of the tab and pulled it down to his navel. He was not wearing an undershirt. She slipped her hand inside, along his ribs, and pulled him toward her. He moved so he was lying belly down, weight resting on his elbows, perfectly positioned to kiss her, which he proceeded to do. Roxanne noticed that he was barefoot.

The kiss was shown from several angles including high enough overhead to show their whole bodies, the one bare, the other dressed, making an L shape with the joint at their heads. There was another shot from the side that showed the fabric moving on his back as her arm wrapped closer around him inside it, as her other hand caressed the side of his head. He reached one arm around her and she broke the kiss to catch it and unzip the sleeve. Then she turned to unzip the other sleeve and began to push the garment off his shoulders. Roxanne expected that he'd wiggle out of it entirely, but when he was bare to the waist, the couple found it necessary to return to kissing, this time with more hands and arms involved. _This is so unlike commercial porn. It's more like a love scene in a mainstream movie, prolonged beyond the point where it usually fades out._ The kissing went on for another five minutes and then there was nipple play involving his nipples as well as hers. Judging from the things his face did, his nipples were very responsive. _Definitely not like mainstream porn._ The woman arched her back so that her nipples came up just above the surface of the water and they played a little game where he tried to suck each of them in turn without drowning. She giggled and squeaked, undignified little sounds; Roxanne wondered why he had chosen to add those squeaks to the soundtrack. It made the whole thing almost too real, as if she were spying on an actual couple instead of watching a clever work of fantasy. She considered turning it off, but he wasn't naked yet and she was still curious.

Finally the jumpsuit came off and Roxanne learned that Megamind, at least in his video self-portrait, was shaped like other men. She was out of excuses to keep watching, but by this time she had to admit that she was into it. She saw him slide into the water, watched another long kiss with full body contact, then tangling of legs and touching of feet, then the blue woman slid one knee up along his ribs to open herself up so he could enter her. It was, she had to admit, a very hot scene, not least because of the obvious affection expressed in the faces and bodies along with the lust. There was a minute or two of long, slow thrusting. Then she rolled over to straddle him, rising dramatically so that the water streamed off her, and things began to speed up. They kept speeding up. As she approached climax, her eyelids fell until only little crescents of white showed. Her voice caught again and again in a sound almost like a sob. Close-up of her hands gripping his biceps so hard that her fingers were half embedded in his flesh. _He likes women who leave bruises?_ Close-up of his face, his eyes wide, his lower lip between his teeth. She wailed and he pulled her down into an embrace, making the beast with two backs that you hear about but almost never see. His knees were up out of the water, showing that his feet were tucked up and braced on the bottom so he could lift his hips higher with each thrust. He let out a nasalized "aaannnggg!" as the woman continued wailing. _What did he do, record himself to get that noise? I can't imagine him choosing it. It just isn't flattering enough._ Another ten seconds and it was over; the couple lay still.

Long shot from above. Long shot from one side. Long shot looking at the tops of their bald, blue heads. Then a closer shot from above, heads and upper bodies. They turned to one another, lazily, smiling. He spoke and the blue woman answered and Roxanne decided she didn't need to sit through any more incomprehensible conversation. She shut the window and clicked up the second item on the list.

A large industrial laundry room. Loud machines, fluorescent overhead lights and baskets of orange fabric. The men working there wore orange, too, prison jumpsuits. The camera moved down an aisle, passing dryers stacked two high, back-to-back, leaving a little space in between, such as only a very skinny person could fit into. Sure enough, between the last two stacks were a couple of prisoners, kissing. The nearer and slightly shorter one was blue.

_I'd think he'd want to forget about this._ The next shot was from the side, as if one of the dryer stacks had suddenly become invisible to allow the camera to see them in profile. The kiss broke and the two gazed into each other's eyes. There was a half-second shot of each of them, close up, as though taken from just over the other's shoulder. _They're kids!_ Roxanne was just getting to the age where she saw teenagers as children, and these were definitely teenagers, their features unformed, their chins and jaws hairless. Young Megamind's human partner looked Hispanic, black curls, high cheekbones close to his nose, full lips. What this video had in common with the previous one, aside from the starring character, was the facial expressions. Love. Unmistakably. They kissed again, this time with their mouths open and their orange-clad bodies pressing passionately together.

Roxanne couldn't get into it. _Is this based on a memory of something that really happened? Or is it something that he wished had happened, a fantasy that came out of an unrequited crush?_ She didn't know which was sadder, but the sadness was definitely killing any arousal she might have felt. She'd heard the phrase "grew up in prison" plenty of times, but she hadn't thought through what that implied. How had his sexuality, forming in that brutal environment, developed into an appetite for the kind of thing she was seeing here, for warmth and gentleness and tender feelings?

On the screen, the couple separated again and unzipped their jumpsuits at the crotch, just enough to get their erections out. The human reached into the open back of the machine next to them and pulled up a plastic measuring cup about half full of a thick, translucent blue liquid. _Laundry detergent._ He poured some into his hand, then applied it to their cocks and held both in one hand, rubbing slowly. Close-up of young Megamind's face, soft with pleasure. Close-up of the Hispanic boy's face, looking intently pleased. He pressed the top of the cup into one of the blue hands, poured the rest of the liquid onto it, then guided that hand down to their cocks. _This is his first time. The other boy needs to show him what to do._ All four hands clasped the two erections. After a moment of experimental thrusting, they established a rhythm with their hips or, rather, two opposing rhythms, so that they rubbed against each other as well as their hands. Another close-up of each face, showing the feelings intensifying. Back to the two cocks, the tip of each popping out in turn from the cocoon of hands. Then a shot from above, looking down between their two bodies. One more of each face, and now they were panting, getting close. Side view of the hands and genitals just as the first drops of cum appeared from the brown cock. The camera backed off a little as the blue one got off as well, and soon the drops were staining the jumpsuits almost to the shoulders and it was impossible to tell who was producing what.

When it was over, they leaned together, panting, holding each other. Long moment of that. Then they nuzzled a little, stood fully upright again, and at long last undressed, pulling the baggy legs of the jumpsuits right over their shoes. Each cleaned himself with his stained jumpsuit. The human reached into the machine again and pulled out a plastic bag that turned out to contain two clean jumpsuits. They dressed again. Megamind turned around and the camera angle switched to the outside aisle, showing his face between the two dryer stacks, looking right and left. Back to the side shot, the Hispanic boy coming up behind him and squeezing his butt. Megamind glanced over his shoulder with a steamy smile and then dashed away. The last shot was of the human, looking smug. There had been no sound the entire time except the background roar of the machines.

Roxanne wanted to cry.

She shut down the window and clicked the next line.

Minion? _Two_ Minions?

She paused it. She had never seen Minion outside of his robot-gorilla "body", but here he was in open water with plants and bits of floating debris. In fact, it looked like Lake Michigan just off one of the state parks on a summer day. The other fish with him was, she saw now, a different individual of the same species, probably a character created using the same software that had built the blue woman in the first video.

Why had she assumed that only Megamind used this software? For that matter, why should she assume that Megamind had made any of this? Perhaps this was yet another service that Minion provided for his master: custom stroke material. And, while he was at it, why shouldn't he make some for himself?

She hit Continue. The two fish conversed in the alien language. A school of smaller fish, of a different species, went by in the background. Suddenly they both turned, flashed through the water and seized the last member of the school in their jaws. Minion had the head, the other fish the flesh just in front of the tail. They pulled it apart, its guts stringing out in the water between the pieces, and ate it.

_Ewww._ Intellectually she had known what those pointy teeth of Minion's were for, known he was a predator, but to see him acting like one, that was gross, especially in a context where it was almost certainly a prelude to sex. Minion had always been nice to her. She didn't want to think of him as the kind of person who was turned on by gore.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket, sounding the alarm she had set before she came here. Out of time. She closed the window with the Minion video. Then, unsure of how to put the system in standby mode, she just left it to shut itself down.

As she walked back to her apartment, she reflected on what she'd seen. When she'd sat down in that chair, she'd expected scenes of bondage and domination, maybe torture and rape, and she'd been braced for some of those scenes to include images of herself. Instead, she'd learned that the Evil Overlord's secret wish was to be a happily married, contributing member of a society that fully accepted him, something that millions of ordinary people all over the world took for granted and that he could never attain on this planet, no matter how powerful he became. She'd learned that he was still deeply marked by his prison upbringing. She'd learned that he was hungry for affection. She'd learned that she meant something to him, but not the kind of something she'd thought. And she'd been forcibly reminded that, of the pair of them, Minion might be the more dangerous.

Two nights later, she had one of those email deluges that busy people, especially well-known busy people, have sometimes. She sat down at the computer in her apartment in the late afternoon and by the time she was done, the sky and her apartment were dark. She finished the last one, started to shut down, and out of the corner of her eye, caught sight of something weird. For a second there, her face, reflected in the window, lit only by the blue light of the screen, didn't look like her face; it looked like the face of the alien woman in Megamind's video. It gave rise to a bizarre thought. _What if I had been that woman? What if I had been born into that species, on that planet?_ But if she had been born into the world depicted in that video, he would have been, too. He wouldn't have been the Evil Overlord. He wouldn't have kidnapped her over and over. He wouldn't have had his values warped by being brought up in prison, by the most corrupt members of a species that was not even his own. Not that he would have been ordinary. Ordinary men don't become test pilots. But he would probably have been a decent person, someone she could trust. _Could I have loved that man? Married him? Been waiting for him naked in a pool of steaming water?_

Yes, but only if there's a period after the word "naked". She was not the kind to be lying around on a sunny afternoon. She'd have a home office and she'd be getting something done while she waited for him. But she'd be naked. And she'd definitely get him out of that flight suit a little sooner.

Roxanne turned on the hallway light and went into the bedroom looking for her vibrator. Her imagination could definitely do that video one better.

# # # # #

She was still thinking about him the next morning at breakfast when Minion called. "Hi, Ms. Ritchi. Uncle Omar just invited us to dinner and he said to bring you."

"Where and when?" she asked, rolling her eyes over the phrasing, which implied that the Evil Overlord would just command her to show up and that she'd obey. Especially since it was more or less true. Any time she had an opportunity to get into Megamind's head and exert some influence, she'd take it.

"Romanov's, Friday at ten-thirty."

"They serve dinner that late?"

"Uncle Omar made special arrangements. They're going to clear off the terrace so we can come in on hoverbikes. What, Sir? Oh. Sorry, Sir. I didn't realize it was supposed to be a surprise."

"I've never seen a hoverbike actually land," Roxanne replied. "That'll be surprise enough." Every time she'd seen a hoverbike in action, the action had always ended with Metro Man smashing it out of the sky. "What kind of a place is Romanov's?"

"Fancy," said the fish. "They don't allow men in without jackets and ties. Technically that doesn't apply to me, but the boss wants to do this in style, so he's modifying one of my spare suits." Roxanne made a mental note: _he calls his mechanical body a suit._

"Now, that will be the real surprise. I'm so used to you in the gorilla suit, it's hard to imagine you in anything else. What's he going to be wearing?"

"I think I've spilled enough surprises for now. But it won't be his usual."

"Okay, I'll show up ready to be surprised."


	6. Chapter 6

Roxanne bought one long dress a year. She called it her awards dinner dress because the annual Press Club Awards Dinner was the only occasion when she could be sure of wearing it. This year's dress was white with an overlay of fine silver mesh, with a matching jacket, a little silver purse and a transparent headband supporting a spray of tiny rhinestones that started behind her right ear, widened for an inch or two, and then thinned out as it passed over the top of her head, so that there were only a scattered half-dozen or so on the left side. There were also tiny rhinestone beads along the hems, cuffs, collar and the edges of the purse. Little silver slippers went with it. On Friday night she put it all on and took a cab to Romanov's.

It was at the top of one of the older downtown buildings. A big, stocky, pale man in a tuxedo, bald except for a fringe of white, met her as the elevator opened and lead her through a red-carpeted dining room where the chairs were already on the tables. At the far end of the room, the wall was open to the night air and the empty terrace beyond. Just inside it, one table was set for four. Omar rose as they approached.

"Why, looky here," he said with a smile. "It's Miss America."

She smiled back as the maitre d' seated her. "Thanks. You look really good, yourself." He was wearing another fancy suit, solid black this time, with a red silk hankie peaking out of the breast pocket. His vest was red and gold.

"Got to look first class to show respect for a first-class place." Jenkins transferred his smile to the man behind her chair.

"You have always honored my place," the maitre d' replied in a Russian accent so thick, she couldn't help suspecting that he was deliberately exaggerating it. "This Overlord, no disrespect to him, but he is a boy. When I have hair, you, Omar Jenkins, are the king of the city." Their host looked out into the night as he finished his sentence. Suddenly his expression changed from joviality to fear. They followed his gaze. Two hoverbikes were coming. Straight at them. Top speed.

Before Roxanne finished turning her head, they began to pull up. They passed overhead, each trailing a line of brainbots. No sooner were the ends of the lines out of sight overhead than the bikes appeared again, coming up from below the railings on either side of the terrace on matching upward trajectories. They stalled together and came diagonally down, passed each other, levelled out and roared away Where their paths had crossed, the two lines of brainbots came together and stopped, forming a letter M above the terrace. Then they broke away and arranged themselves along the railing, facing outward. The two hoverbikes reappeared from above, descending onto the terrace as gently as falling leaves.

Roxanne was delighted. Oh, there was a professional part of her commenting that, after an attention-getting stunt like that, there had to be at least one citizen out there filming from a window, which meant that this dinner would be news by morning and she'd probably be part of the story, whether she reported it herself or not, so she'd better be prepared to report it. But the aliens' dramatic entrance just now had touched the part of her that was still nine years old and loved stunts and light shows and anything spectacular. She knew she had a silly grin on her face. She decided not to do anything about it.

As soon as the engines were silent, Jenkins spoke. "You boys ought to give a man some warning before you pull shit like that. I almost drew on you."

"Sorry, Uncle Omar," said Minion, rising from his seat, not sounding or looking very sorry. His modified mechanical body looked like a black suit of armor, shaped to vaguely resemble a modern man's suit. Instead of a helmet, his real fish body was visible in a glass dome identical to the one in his gorilla suit, possibly the one she'd seen under the water in the lair last Sunday. A shiny steel shirt-front and a black bow tie seemed to also be built in.

"Drew?" asked Roxanne, turning to Jenkins. "What do you...?" She broke off as the old man used his left thumb to pull back the left side of his jacket, revealing a shoulder holster with a pistol.

"I never go anywhere unarmed, Miss Ritchi."

"Sir?" said Minion.

Megamind, in his usual cape with the spiked leather yoke over what looked like an ordinary black tuxedo with a green shirt that matched his eyes and a black ascot, hadn't moved. He was staring at Roxanne with an expression she recognized. It was the fan stare, the one that, when she saw it on a stranger's face, would be followed by squee, _Oh my God, it's Roxanne Ritchi!_ or something like that. What Megamind said was "You have stars in your hair."

"They're rhinestones," she answered.

"I wqs referring to the effect," he said, and now he was getting up, stepping out of the hoverbike, coming toward the table, joined by Minion. "I had thought there must be some natural law limiting how beautiful a member of the human species could be. I am delighted to be proven wrong." Up close, she could see that the tuxedo was entirely made of fine leather. She found herself wanting to touch it. The black ascot was pinned with a blue gem at the center.

"Wow, thanks. Hey, is there something about being a famous criminal that makes you really good with the compliments?" She glanced between Megamind and Jenkins as she spoke.

"Better to say," Jenkins replied as Megamind sat down across from her and Minion across from Jenkins, "that long incarceration makes a man appreciate female beauty. The rest is just the gift of gab."

Now the maitre d' reappeared with a tray. He wasn't friendly anymore; his face was carefully neutral. _Didn't like that little scare, huh?_ In silence he poured vodka and set out golden caviar, tiny thin pancakes and sour cream. Over this first course, Megamind told them about the visit to the power plant. It had gone well, apparently. Alterations to the plant were to begin the following week, and Minion would be going up to modify the Death Ray as soon as there was a day of calm, clear weather for the launch. Roxanne started planning a news spot. Megamind promised to send her some views of the city skyline with the beam of the Death Ray Photoshopped in.

Over the soup course, the Evil Overlord talked about the stylistic modifications he intended to impose on various public buildings and institutions. The name of the local football team was The Miners, a legacy from the days when the players really had been drawn from the iron and copper mines in the region. Megamind wanted to change it to something more menacing, such as The Maulers or The Monsters. Jenkins discouraged this, saying that sports fans are tradition-minded and that, considering all the other changes people were going to have to get used to, it wouldn't hurt to let this one thing stay the same.

Roxanne stayed out of the conversation, watching Megamind. _This could have been a good man._ Now that she had allowed herself the thought, she could see how little genuine evil there was in him. It was mostly style, the coping mechanism of a man who saw inspiring fear as his only alternative to inspiring contempt and rejection. On the other hand, he could have ended up hating the whole human race. That he hadn't was probably the doing of Omar Jenkins and the other "uncles" who had raised him. Jenkins was an amoral old snake, but he wasn't a hater, and neither was his blue protégé. Or his finny one. Minion had, if anything, more reason to hate and fear humans, and possibly more instinctual prompting to do harm, but he was polite, thoughtful, and generally better company than a lot of humans she'd known.

During the main course, Megamind started on the ideas he had for making the city more independent, first by converting all vehicles to electric (which would mean Death Ray) power, then by requiring that all the lawns in the city be converted to growing food, and finally by hanging giant "window boxes" of soil on the outsides of all the tall buildings, in which vine crops would be planted and trained to grow up the windows. When he mentioned that the vines, by absorbing sunlight, would also reduce air conditioning demand in the summer, Jenkins burst out laughing.

"Hippies!" he all but shouted, holding his belly as he chortled. His guests stared at him in confusion until he got hold of himself enough to explain. "Your Uncle Billy Bob was always looking for new pot growers. He would go all over the region to these little communes and organic farms, where the hippies was always growing a little pot for themselves, and he'd persuade 'em to grow a little more to sell us. Sometimes he'd bring them hippies into town, and that's what they'd talk about: running cars with some other fuel besides gas, plowing up the lawns for vegetable gardens, making buildings more what they call energy efficient. You go looking for the experts in this field, you gonna be surrounded with hippies." The idea of the Evil Overlord surrounded with hippies started him chuckling again.

"Amusing as you may find the notion, I'd like to speak with some of these, er, hippies," replied Megamind. "Do you think you could still find any of them after all these years?" Omar paused and frowned, thinking about it.

"I think I could." Roxanne spoke up. "There are institutes dedicated to this kind of thing, and lobbying groups, and some universities teach it in their engineering and architecture schools. If I find out any of their senior people are from this area, I'll mention your name," she turned to Jenkins, "and see if they know you."

"Not me," replied the old gangster. "The man they would all have known was Billy Bob McCracken. He got sprung for poor health a few years back and bought hisself about a half a square mile of swamp out east of here. I got a standing invitation to go out there for what he calls his hillbilly hospitality; you know, homebrew, pot and sitting on the porch shooting at things."

"The next time you go out there," said Megamind, "ask him what he remembers about those people. Get as many names as you can. I'll compare his list with Ms. Ritchi's and that will tell me who to talk to first."

"Why don't y'all come out with me?" Jenkins asked. "He'd enjoy seeing you boys, and he wouldn't mind meeting Miss Ritchi." Megamind and Minion exchanged glances.

"Only one of us at a time can leave the city," said Minion.

"There are always more aspiring supervillains than there are available cities," added Megamind. "So we have to keep a close eye on this one."

"You might want to think about doing something about that," said Jenkins, "cause two men don't make a posse, no matter how badass they are."

"Eh, we have not had much luck with recruitment." Megamind's face suggested that there was a lot more to this than he was saying.

"Well, that was when you was just about fighting Metro Man, right? Now that you're the Overlord, it changes things." At that point, the maitre d' brought the dessert cart and a busboy began clearing away the dishes from the main course. "You don't have to say anything now. Just think about it, is all I'm saying."

They busied themselves with choosing desserts. When they each had the one they wanted and the staff had gone, there was a moment of thoughtful silence. Then Roxanne found herself looking up and asking "Which one is your star? The one you came from, I mean. Can you see it from here?"

"The brightest stars are not the ones most hospitable to life," Megamind replied. "One of the orbiting telescopes might be able to pick out the light that would have left it a bit less than seventeen hundred years ago."

"So in another seventeen hundred years, assuming we have the technology, people on Earth will be able to see you leaving to come here."

"Oh, I think they'll have more to interest them than our little craft. It's not every day that an entire cluster gets destroyed."

"Cluster?"

Minion answered. "Fourteen star systems, twenty inhabited planets, a hundred and forty-three orbiting habitats, five intelligent species." Roxanne's brain tried for a moment to process the magnitude of the destruction and shorted out.

"Ronnie?" asked Omar, a little incredulously. "You remember this stuff?"

"I was planning on being a space pilot," the fish replied. "They have to know this stuff because sometimes the hyperdrive screws up and dumps you out somewhere you didn't expect and you have to figure out how to get back. So I started memorizing it when I was real little."

_They both wanted to be pilots?_ Just as her stroke room experience had given her an alternate Megamind, the good blue man he might have been, an alternate Minion now came to life for her. Roxanne understood ambition, and she noticed that Minion had mostly used the present tense, showing that this long-thwarted ambition of his was still alive in his heart. But instead of being an accepted member of his society with a regular, useful job, here he was playing henchman to the Evil Overlord because what else could he be on this planet? An exhibit in the Aquarium? A pet? A wild predator gradually losing his ability to talk from lack of anyone to talk with? Roxanne was generally a stranger to maternal feelings, but now she had an impulse to take Minion in her arms (she imagined them both in the big swimming pool in the lair, with herself standing shoulder deep in the water) and hold him and comfort him and tell him that somehow she'd make it all better.

On the other hand, he was here, alive, and from the sound of it, that made him perhaps the luckiest member of his species.

"So why did you two come alone?" she asked. "Why wasn't there a whole fleet of refugee ships?"

"I think the time between when they found out what was coming and when it came was maybe two weeks, and there's a limit to how much the antigravity units can lift," the fish continued. "My hoverbike with me in it, suited up, is about the most they can do. It was just enough to get me and the boss and our escape pod up out of the gravity well. For more, you'd need a rocket, and those take months to build."

"I suspect that there were some other escape pods like ours and perhaps some rockets," added Megamind, "but they all went to nearer star systems. We think Earth was chosen for us because, of all planets known to be inhabited by machine-age humanoids, this one was furthest away and therefore least likely to be caught up in the destruction."

"Sounds like it was kind of a Hail Mary play," said Omar.

"Pretty much. Minion had a little training in wilderness survival, but mostly they had to hope that we'd come to the attention of some friendly natives who would take us in. Which is exactly what happened. I remember when our pod first opened after we landed. We saw five men, later to be known to us as Uncle Omar, Uncle Billy Bob, Uncle Lefty, Uncle Spee-ider and Tio Luis. I remember that Uncle Lefty turned to the others and said something. Neither of us knew a word of English -"

"'Can we keep 'em?' That's what Lefty said," finished Omar. "You two broke in on the last executive council of the Omar Jenkins organization. The local cops was still in our pocket, but there was these newsies that kicked up such a fuss for so long that the state finally brought in the federal cops and the Mounties. They took us apart and wasn't nothing we could do about it, and we wasn't the kind that was used to feeling helpless. But hide a baby and a fish from the warden and the guards? We could do that. 'Course, this li'l dude here," he gestured at Megamind, "turned out to take more hiding that a ordinary baby. Other babies, the worst they do is cry. Li'l Blue built things and blew things up."

"When he was a baby?" Roxanne was incredulous.

"Well, see, he walked at, what, seven months?" Jenkins glanced up at the two aliens, who nodded. "And right away he was taking things apart and making other things with 'em. You couldn't leave anything mechanical or electrical where he could get at it 'cause it sure wouldn't be the same when he got through with it. Anything that broke, we'd give it to him, just to see what he'd make out of it, and the men who smoked all gave him their empty cigarette packs 'cause he could use the foil and the cellophane to make these li'l teeny solar panels. Then one day his Uncle Alphonse thought it would be funny to teach the baby to pick pockets. Over the next week or so, it seemed like every lighter in the place went missing. A couple of machines in the laundry room broke down around the same time and they turned out to have parts missing. We finally found this li'l secret workshop he made in a closet, and there he was, welding something out of the rejects from the license plate shop. It looked like it was gonna be a tricycle, so we didn't think nothing of it. What we hadn't counted on was that thing mounted above the front wheel actually doing something. We thought, you know, he saw a tricycle on TV that had a headlight, so he put a headlight on it. Turned out that thing was a ray gun. First time he took his tricycle out, he rode it to the end of the hall and blew away the wall. If the warden hadn't been standing right on the other side, there'd have been more men running than the Metro City Marathon."

"Wait, so that was the first the Warden knew you two were in there?"

"We think he suspected," replied Megamind, "because he didn't seem all that surprised to see us. But after that, he officially knew and therefore was obliged to at least go through the motions of finding another home for me. Fortunately, by the very act that brought about my discovery, I had also made myself very hard to place."

"Free to good home," Omar smirked. "Boy from another planet. Picks pockets, rips the wiring out of machines and blows down concrete walls. Comes with a fish that bites."

"Hey, I only bit that one guy and he deserved it." Roxanne looked at Minion with some skepticism. "He thought it was a fun idea to make the blue kid cry by taking away his fish. He was trying to get the other prisoners to play keep-away with me as the ball. I was glad to see that nobody took him up on it."

"That's when he got him a name besides Fishy," Omar continued. "Once he tasted blood, we's all calling him Shark and Piranha and Muskie. It was Piranha that stuck."

"And became...Ronnie?" Roxanne guessed.

"Still my favorite alias," said Minion. "If you ever get email from Ronald Waterman, it's from me."

"Listen, Minion," she said. "If you ever decide you want to be more accepted by the citizens - I don't mean be legally a citizen yourself, because Megamind can just declare that, but have people more willing to deal with you as a person - there are things that can be done using the media. Just ask me." They all turned to Minion.

"Really?" The fish had an expression of wonder on his face. "I mean, I never thought... Yeah, Ms. Ritchi. I would. What do I do?"

"Start with a website," she said. "It can officially be the Evil Overlord's website - I've been thinking that he should have one anyway - but of course the Overlord himself wouldn't stoop to maintaining his own site, so in practice you'll be the one putting up all the content."

"I should have a website?" asked Megamind. "Why?"

"Because people are already arguing about the one order you've already given, because they don't remember it right. As you make more announcements, more people will get them wrong." She didn't need to research this. It was true of every news story ever released. "You need a place where it's all posted permanently, where the public can see it and be clear about it. Then in a sidebar there can be a piece that's like, 'By the way, my name is Minion. I'm the guy in the gorilla suit,'" she turned back to Minion, "and you can tell people something about yourself."

"Now, I don't know too much about this Web stuff," Omar said. "My grandkids showed me some. But I know you, Li'l Blue, and it seems to me like, if you had one of them website things, all you'd do is fill it up with bragging." Roxanne and Minion burst out laughing.

Megamind had a thoughtful look on his face, which gradually resolved into one of those mischievous smiles. "I could, couldn't I? When we were still trying to keep our whereabouts secret, it seemed like too great a security risk, but now that we're no longer in hiding, why not? So my next announcement will not be about municipal workers getting back to work. It will be a declaration of citizenship for Minion." The fish gave a little gasp. "And why stop there? How many sentient beings who don't look human are there on Earth, in hiding, living as animals or under the control of some human on whom they must depend for everything? Uncle Omar, you said something earlier about recruiting a posse. What better pool to recruit from than those who cannot even participate in society anywhere but here, under my rule?"

There was a moment of amazed silence.

"Li'l Blue, I think that's the smartest thing I ever heard you say."

"Sir, you don't know what this means to me." Minion's eyes were wide and his lower lip trembled. Megamind got up and went to Minion. The mechanical body turned its upper half in its chair and the two embraced. Omar leaned toward Roxanne.

"They going to talk in their own language for a minute." She glanced at him and nodded. Her mind was churning over the implications. Megamind put his face on the glass and the two aliens murmured, their faces a few inches apart, fond smiles on their faces. "I told 'em it's rude and they shouldn't do it when there's company, but they only sometimes remember." She could think of a half-dozen sentient non-humanoids known to the public, worldwide, off the top of her head. One was the deep-subterranean intelligence known as Geothermal, who lived in a lava cave in Hawaii. All the rest were, like Minion, attached as sidekicks to some famous human or humanoid. After a long moment, the Evil Overlord returned to his seat.

"We are nearly done, with the business portion of this dinner at least," he said. "Ms. Ritchi, I'd like to go over what I might call the reportable points of the evening." Roxanne got out her phone and brought up the Notes feature. She noticed that she had two messages from her boss. "First off, the repurposing of the Death Ray. Second, the construction of the new front porch for the City Gallery, after which it will reopen."

"Can I mention anything about the other buildings?"

"At this point, just be vague. Say that everything is in the planning stages. Third, the conversion of all vehicles to electrical power is a longterm goal and will eventually be man-date-ory." She guessed that this meant _mandatory_. "Fourth, the reminder that all municipal workers will again be getting their pay and therefore should return to work. Fifth, eh, what is fifth? Oh, the website. And sixth in chronology but first in priority because it is most important, citizenship for Minion and for any other non-humanoid sentient creature who wants it enough to come here and convince me to give it to them. Details of the process will be released later, when I've decided what they should be. Is there anything I'm forgetting, Minion?"

"No, Sir. I think that's it."

"Well, then let's have a toast," said Omar, then looked over his shoulder. "Yo, Sergei." The maitre d' was at his chair in a moment. "You still serve that Martell Cordon Bleu cognac?" The corners of Sergei's mouth turned up just a tiny bit as he replied.

"Of course, Monsieur Jenkins."

"Then pour a round for Miss Ritchi, for the Overlord, and for me." The man left and was back in a moment with a bottle and three small glasses on a tray. While the old Russian poured, Jenkins spoke. "Ronnie, I remember that last little talk we had before you escaped for good. I told you that you'd never have the rights of a man. I ain't often this wrong, and when I am, I ain't often this glad of it." He picked up his glass. "So here's to you Ronnie, 'cause you are finally getting your day." Megamind and Roxanne raised their glasses.

"To Minion."

After the aliens had gone, Roxanne called Frank from the ladies' room. The first video of the landing on the terrace had already been broadcast by a competing station, and he was furious. He told her that Hal was already on the way over and she would be doing a report as soon as he arrived. Sergei was happy to let the filming be done on the terrace and Omar agreed to stay on for a brief interview. It went well. She got home with a feeling of accomplishment and a resolution to hit the gym in the morning. Reporting on the doings of the Evil Overlord was turning out to be a high-calorie beat.


	7. Chapter 7

The next video announcement went out with the morning news at six, seven and eight a.m., and again on the news at noon, six and eleven p.m. It opened with a view of Megamind, seated behind the mayoral desk, which now held almost no loot. Instead, it was crowded with blueprints and notes, although the spiked nameplate remained.

"This is the Evil Overlord speaking to you from City Hall on the subject of citizenship. As I'm sure many of you are aware, my best friend and right-hand man, known as Minion," - the camera zoomed out and a little to the right to show Minion standing next to Megamind's chair; the henchfish gave the audience a smile and a brief wave - "is not a man, in fact is not human at all, and therefore has been denied citizenship despite his very obvious sentience, intelligence and capability, not to mention his many admirable qualities of personality such as loyalty and hard work. It is therefore my will that he shall henceforth be a citizen, with all the perks and privileges attached to that stay-tus. You, the rest of the citizens, will be expected to treat him with respect, not merely because of his special relationship with me, but because it is inherently his due. When the clerks come back to work tomorrow morning, and I expect all city employees to be back at work, they will produce the necessary documents. Congratulations, Minion." Megamind reached toward Minion, and the two shook hands. "Got anything to say to your fellow citizens?"

" I never thought I'd even be, like, a person in human society, and now I'm a citizen. Can I tell the rest, sir?"

"By all means."

"Anybody out there who's like me, who's intelligent and sentient but can't be a citizen of the place they live because they're not physically like a human, that's not true here. Come and talk to us."

"Yes," said the blue man. "All individuals, no matter what their bodily form, who can convince us of their intelligence, sentience and at least some potential value to the city will be eligible for citizenship, will be introduced to the public via broadcast and may possibly find employment in my service. The rest of you, the great majority who have citizenship through the accident of inheritance, will be expected to treat these new citizens approopriately. That is all. Carry on with your lives."

Even while it broadcast, brainbots were sent out with new posters with pictures of Minion and summaries of the announcement printed on them. They pasted these new posters up over the top of any "No You Can't" posters close enough to ground level that the text could be read from the sidewalk. The Overlord was determined to inform even those citizens who never paid attention to broadcasts.

###

About two that afternoon, a stout woman of mixed race with dyed brown hair in the sort of short, tightly permed style typical of Midwestern, middle aged, middle class women strode toward City Hall as if she expected to enter. When a brainbot blocked her way with a menacing snap of its metal jaws, she stood her ground and addressed it calmly.

"This message is for Minion," she said. "My name is Delia Athelstein. I'm one of those city employees that Megamind ordered back to work tomorrow morning and I just want to make sure the office space here will be ready when everyone arrives. If there are any arrangements that need to be made ahead of time, my cell phone number is 734-588-3349. Thank you for your attention." Returning to her car, she was confident that she'd hear from Minion promptly.

Mrs. Athelstein (she had never adopted the modern 'Ms.') had been administrative director to three mayoral administrations and the real most powerful person in city government for the last two of them. A major part of her power lay in her willingness to do things like this, to go in ahead of time and make sure that things were ready and that glitches were limited to the sort that furthered her agenda. She had appealed to Minion because she had him figured for her opposite number in the Overlord's power structure, the one who actually figured out how to wield the power that his boss, like most politicians, had acquired by accident in the course of his striving for glory. Minion heard her message, did a little research and called his boss.

"Sir, did you know that there are a hundred and twenty-nine city employees who work in this building, and they're going to be showing up here tomorrow expecting to get to their desks?"

"What? Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I only just realized it now, sir. One of them came by early, about fifteen minutes ago, and left a message. Sir, what are we going to do?"

"Hmm. We don't want them in City Hall. They'll be in our way. And we don't want to just send them home after we've ordered them back to work. Ergo, we've got to find space for them somewhere else."

"We've got three buildings out on the peninsula that we could empty out. They're kind of raw, but there's more than enough room. If we get the brainbots working on it tonight, we can probably have everything ready."

"Excellent. What would I do without you, Minion?"

The fish called Mrs. Athelstein back and the two met for an hour and a half in the second floor conference room, hammering out the details of interior layout, computer networking, employee parking, and the dozens of other details involved in moving a large office. Minion thoroughly enjoyed himself. He and Megamind had seldom collaborated with other villains, so the experience of working with colleagues was a rare one for him. Mrs. Athelstein didn't seem at all put off by his appearance, so she struck him as a rarely unprejudiced human. (In fact, she had prepared by watching all the footage of Minion she could find in order to reduce her discomfort with his appearance to an undetectable minimum.) She even joked with him a little. ("How do you like your first bureaucratic headache?") By the end, he was feeling almost like he had made a friend, or at least an associate he could feel comfortable with.

As for Mrs. Athelstein, she came away relieved that, while the Evil Overlord himself seemed to be an absolute loon, his second-in-command seemed like a solid, sensible person that she could work with. She had a hundred and twenty-eight phone calls to make and she looked forward to the end of her month-long involuntary vacation. She made a remark in the course of the meeting that was to have repercussions. "I always thought overlords lived in palaces. By now I expected that you'd have either built one or taken over Scott Mansion."

###

Three days later, another video went out, of Minion introducing the first successful out-of-town applicant for citizenship under the non-sentients edict: an African Grey Parrot who gave his name as Stanley Nakayama. This bird told the camera his life story: he had been captive-bred and adopted at an early age by Charlene Nakayama at the time of her retirement as a professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Stanley was quite happy with Charlene, whom he called "the best human mom a bird could have," but when the professor died, her relatives sold Stanley back to the same parrot breeder he'd come from. This breeder put him in an aviary in which he was the only parrot who was conversant, the technical term for a bird who could converse with humans instead of just imitating them. He found that he was uninterested in non-conversant females and generally lonely and bored. Also, Charlene had supplied him with specially designed bird suits, like women's halter-top one-piece bathing suits but with a hole for his tail and hooks instead of elastic at the waist. He had come to prefer wearing the clothes and the breeder had taken them away. (He appeared on camera in a bird suit Minion had made from his description.) He had heard about the offer of citizenship on a radio broadcast that an aviary worker was listening to and had escaped that same day, flying the rest of that day and all the next, sleeping on heating grates in La Crosse and Milwaukee (where he got a friendly reception from the homeless humans) and taking the ferry across the lake. In Metro City he hoped to find employment as a document courier. "I might not be able to carry as much as a human on a bike, but I'm faster because I can fly above traffic."

Stanley's story was picked up by the wire services and broadcast all over the world. At the time, the largest population of conversant parrots north of the Rio Grande was a group of thirty-seven at a research center near Austin, Texas. The night after his story went out, the avian inmates staged a mass escape. Authorities tried to round them up, but the runaway flock was abetted by sympathetic humans. Thirty-five reached Metro City after a dramatic 1,250-mile flight that fascinated the public for weeks. The Evil Overlord released a public statement of welcome to the flock, adding that he was gleeful over the chaos and disruption caused by his offer of citizenship to non-humanoid sentients and hoped for more of the same. Individual birds continued to arrive more quietly, and in two cases humans moved to Metro City in order that their parrots could apply for citizenship. The same thing was happening, on a smaller scale, with talking members of other species, and a few who didn't talk, such as a runaway circus elephant who communicated by writing. Megamind interviewed and approved dogs, cats, various domestic hoofed animals and a few primates. Minion designed a Non-Human Citizens' page for the website with a classified section to help them find work, housing and other necessities. For the first time, the fish found himself the center of an active social circle, a community in which he was looked up to, his advice frequently asked and his company sought after. He began to secretly hope that Roxanne would begin to return Megamind's affections; the boss always demanded less of Minion's time when he had a girlfriend.

###

**Metro City Gallery Transformed**

by Alan Carpenter

Special to the **Detroit Free Press** Arts Section

When I first heard that the Evil Overlord of Metro City was redesiging the interior of the Metro City Gallery of Art and adding a portico of his own design, I was expecting something appropriate to the stage set for a heavy metal concert. Instead, I am forced to conclude that Metro City's ruler actually knows something about architecture, particularly the Art Deco style of the last century.

The new portico takes some of its stylistic elements from the Neoclassical Gallery building to which it is attached, then adds moderne elements and ornamentation based on ancient Egyptian decor. All these elements are widely used in Art Deco. The designer's infamous personal emblem is nowhere to be seen and there isn't a spike or a scrap of leather anywhere. The only self-reference he has made is in the choice of colors: black enamel, blue glass and stainless steel, all of which are also well within the Art Deco tradition.

The new portico is functional as well. One of the few flaws of the Gallery as originally built is the lack of any protection from the elements until one is inside the building. Popular shows were sometimes less well-attended than they might be simply because people got tired of waiting outside in bad weather. Gallery management estimates that forty-eight people could wait in line under the new portico.

The really radical change is to the inside of the building. Megamind has tossed aside the centuries-old traditional approach to gallery layout and started over. Instead of the wide, airy, high-ceilinged and marble-floored space of the old gallery, with most works displayed in groups and most backgrounds white, one finds oneself in a maze created out of theatrical blackout curtains, with black carpet on the floor and a matte black ceiling only nine feet overhead, crowded with lighting equipment, microphones and camera lenses, their cases colored to match so that they don't call attention to themselves. (Gallery staff is invisible, but a medical emergency or act of vandalism would be immediately noticed.) The carpet muffles footsteps and the curtains absorb the voices of other visitors.

At the end of each leg of the maze is a single work of art, the only thing in sight that is really well-lit. The design of the maze makes it impossible to see more than two works from any one position and the lines of sight for those two are, in most instances, at ninety degree angles from each other. This has the effect of focusing the viewer's attention on one work at a time, undistracted by others displayed in the vicinity. The viewer seems to be alone with the work. If any element of the new design is copied elsewhere, this will be it.

There are exceptions, such as the Salon du Princesse, which is unchanged and which opens out of the side of a passageway, as before. Certain of the most popular works are displayed in wider spaces, with a pair of benches arranged like theater seats in front of each. In contrast, there are a few that are displayed through small window openings, often from quite a short distance, so that one is confronted by the work rather abruptly. I must admit that I never truly felt the startling character of Caravaggio's "Medusa" until I suddenly encountered it, barely more than an arm's length away, through one of those openings. It demonstrates that thought has been given to the most effective display of each work.

Elevators are scattered through the maze. The height of the main hall is thirty-five feet from the floor to the base of the skylight. Scaffolding has made three stories out of it, which makes up for the enormous amount of wall space lavished on each work. All those works which were on permanent exhibit before the current regime are once again on permanent exhibit, including those which the Evil Overlord had previously removed and which most of us in the art world did not expect to see again during his lifetime. Instead, he has made the Metro City Gallery of Art into his personal display space and then invited the rest of us into it.

The last upward-bound elevator lifts the viewer into the skylight itself, a half-cylinder of glass ten feet in height and twenty in width. Stepping out of the elevator, one walks the eighty feet of its length with a distinct sense of being directly under the sky. At the end of the walk, in a kind of small amphitheater with two rows of stepped-down seating, is a single work: Van Gogh's "Starry Night". The elevator behind it returns visitors to the lobby. The choice of this relatively recent masterwork as the culmination of the gallery experience, over some of the great Renaissance paintings also in this collection, is hardly the most radical in this very radical presentation, but it seems deeply fitting. The setting reinforces both the character of the painting itself and the context of its presentation: Metro City's connection to the universe beyond Earth. Gallery hours: 3pm to midnight, Tuesday through Saturday.

###

The report began with a shot of Roxanne and a red-faced man with a salt-and-pepper mustache. Both wore hard hats. The man wore a coverall and held a clipboard. They were outdoors. Behind them, about ten feet away, was a grey concrete wall with a heavy steel door in it. "This is Roxanne Ritchi reporting from Metro City Power's main generating plant, where Megamind is preparing to bring a new power source online: the orbiting superweapon known as the Death Ray. With me is Josh Longran, head engineer at the plant, and the Evil Overlord is around here somewhere." She glanced around.

"Inside the blast wall, last I saw of him," said Longran, gesturing behind him.

"This is a blast wall?" Roxanne asked, gesturing behind them.

"Yes, ma'am. We all saw the enormous explosion that resulted the one time the Death Ray was used, so even though its power is going to be stepped down a few orders of magnitude, I lobbied for this blast wall, just to -"

He was interrupted by the door banging open behind them. Megamind appeared, framed in daylight, showing that the door led from outdoors to outdoors.

"Ah, Ms. Ritchi, you're here. Come, come." He turned, his cape swirling behind him, and went back the way he'd come. The camera followed him through the door, then stopped a few feet beyond it and panned upward over a satellite dish that could have covered a city block.

"Wow," said Roxanne, out of sight. The camera swung around to her. "So this dish is supposed to catch the beam of the Death Ray instead of being destroyed by it?"

Megamind stepped suddenly in front of her so that his face took up the entire image. He was looking straight into the lens. "Yes! Yes! And convert it to electricity, which will then be transmitted through those cables." He vanished from the picture. "See the cables? The camera focused on two heavy black cables, thicker than the Evil Overlord's thighs, following them from the base of the dish along the concrete surface and out through the wall. "Now follow!" The camera followed him back out the door and to the right, around the curve of the wall until it came to a row of low blocky shapes like sheds without doors, all linked to the cables emerging from the wall. "The cables feed these battery arrays. Once we've got them filling up properly, then we'll start feeding the power into the grid at times of high demand." The camera panned upward, following the wires that rose from the battery arrays and joined horizontal wires stretching away to the plant's main generator building. Then it came back to Roxanne, Megamind and Longran. "Over the next few months, as we work out the bugs, we'll be depending more and more on the Death Ray, less and less on those turbines and things in there." He gestured in the direction of the generator building.

"So how is this going to affect the life of the city?" asked Roxanne.

"Well, to begin with, I'm declaring a no-fly zone for half a mile around the plant in all directions. Not going to worry about enforcement much, since anything flying into the beam will be instantly destroyed. The importance of the zone is that, during the initial testing phase, the beam won't be constantly on, and we want aircraft to stay out of the way even when it's off. There might be brief outages when we're switching over, but the summer brownouts should be fewer and shorter than in previous years."

"So it'll all balance out. Mr. Longran. How does this method of power generation compare with the conventional methods of power generation that Metro City Power uses now?"

"Well, once it's up and running, it'll have a lot fewer maintenance headaches. There are almost no moving parts involved." Megamind bounced on his heels as Longran spoke, clearly impatient to have the camera and Roxanne's attention returned to him.

"And are you confident that it can meet the city's electricity needs?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am. From the specs I've seen about the power this thing puts out, we'll have more than enough."

"But we'll never completely cease to use the conventional power generation equipment," the blue man interjected. "The Death Ray is still, first and foremost, a weapon, and I don't want to have to plunge the city into blackout when I need to use it in battle. So after it's up and running, we'll be switching back to conventional power for a little while a couple of times a month. Ideally the staff here will get so good at it that the switch will be smooth and quick and hardly noticeable, and Minion or I can retarget at will."

"Which brings me to our last question. Why? What's in it for the Evil Overlord?"

"Well, Ms. Ritchi, when a villain's base of operations is known, it needs to be pretty self-sufficient. Otherwise the forces of good can bring it down simply by interdicting supplies. I am the first villain to have an entire city as my base since the development of electrical power, and I will not be thwarted by shipping clerks."

Roxanne turned back to the camera. "There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. This is Roxanne Ritchi, reporting for Channel Eight News."

###

Madison Stivik became a Megahead when she was thirteen. She was a bright, gawky, socially inept, somewhat hyperactive nerd, friendless and frequently picked on; Megamind's brilliance and rebelliousness spoke to something inside her. Using money saved up from her allowance, she bought the domain name , and started a fan site. Monitoring an online community turned out to be one of her gifts.

Over the next ten years, her site became the most important center of Megahead activity on the web. At the same time, Madison grew up, married one of her fellow nerds, started a software business with her new husband and his equally nerdy brother, and had a baby. When Megamind became Evil Overlord, many Megaheads fell away, either because he didn't immediately move on to grander schemes or because a rebel who defeats the Establishment is no longer a rebel, but is instead the new Establishment and so no longer appeals to the inner rebel in the fan. But Madison's loyalty never wavered. Actually meeting her idol in the flesh was something she longed for, but from a distance. She often fantasized about such a meeting, but never dared do anything to make it happen.

Then one day it happened to her. Her son was at preschool. Her husband and brother-in-law were upstairs in the little cluster of rooms that was their company headquarters. She was out in the back yard, grubbing out the thistle plants that kept coming back no matter what she did. Suddenly she heard a bowg and when she looked up, there was a brainbot hovering a few feet away. It handed her a pale blue card with Megamind's emblem and oversized, spiky writing on it.

"The Evil Overlord would like to speak with you," she read. "Please follow the brainbot." As soon as she looked up, the little bot moved away, toward the street. As she and it came around the corner of the house, a car blinked into visibility at the curb. The Car. She caught her breath. Until she saw The Car, this could, just barely, have been a prank by some of her fellow fans, but its presence meant Megamind was really in there and she was about to meet him. And she was in gardening clothes with dirt on her knees. If she had been just a little older, or if someone from her adult life had been there with her, she'd have shrugged and said to herself _Oh, well, so much for presentation_, but at that moment, alone with the brainbot, she felt thirteen again. She quivered with the equal urges to run squeeing to the car and to flee into the house. For a moment the urges cancelled out and left her pinned in place, but when she stopped the brainbot did, too, and looked back at her with its camera lens eye.

She made her legs work. By the time she reached the sidewalk and saw the car's rear door open and the brainbot motion her in, her scurrying mind had fixed on the fact that her idol was in a position of authority now, and the possibility that she was in trouble.

"Ms. Stivik. I am very pleased to meet you," the blue alien said as she slid in.

"Megamind, oh God, I, um, if this is about something somebody said on the site, I'm sorry. I don't really -"

"Oh, no, no. It's nothing about the content. I am entirely in favor of a diverse, shall we say permissive approach to monitoring, although truthfully I lurk very little. It's Minion who really keeps an eye on the fandom." The Evil Overlord gestured toward the driver's seat.

Minion turned around in his tank. "Hi, Ms. Stivik," he said with a friendly smile. She began to relax almost without realizing it. If Minion was smiling like that, she couldn't really be in trouble, could she?

"No, what we want to talk to you about is the name."

"Oh. Yeah, I heard you were going to start an official site."

"Yes, and it will be megamind dot gov, but how many people just type in dot com from reflex? At the same time, we appreciate our fandom and don't want to disrupt its activities. So what I propose is that our front page, whether approached via dot com or dot gov, will have a large button in the upper right-hand corner that will take people through to your site. It will give you a kind of quasi-official stay-tus and, of course, hosting will be free of charge from now on."

"That sounds awesome."

"Then all we need is your signature." Minion passed a clipboard full of papers over the seatback. She spent a couple of minutes reading and signing. Megamind pulled out copies for her and thanked her. She had one request.

"Could you, like, stay here until my husband and my brother-in-law look out the window? 'Cause they'll never believe this otherwise."

"Certainly. Very nice meeting you, Ms. Stivik." She went inside. A minute later, two male faces appeared at an upstairs window. Minion waited until they both had expressions of goggle-eyed astonishment before he engaged the stealth mode.


	8. Chapter 8

A fourth video went out from the Overlord's office the next week. It opened as before, except that the mayoral desk was piled with boxes.

"This is the Evil Overlord speaking to you from City Hall on the subject of public safety. It has been pointed out to me that, since the demise of Metro Man, the increase in violence against persons on the street has begun to disrupt ordinary life. I lay this problem at his door. He called you helpless. He liked you that way. I do not. It is my will that you, the citizens, take upon yourselves this responsibility. To that end, I have here several cases of extremely close range non-lethal weapons. The boxes on this side are pepper spray. The ones on the other side are electroshock weapons, not TASERs, but a competing product that is slightly easier to use. And these here are old-fashioned brass knuckles." He dangled an example of the last from one gloved finger. "I will be giving them away free of charge to those women who have enough courage to come up and ask me for one while Minion and I are taking the air in Spider Bot in Simons Park this coming Saturday night. My definition of womanhood will be biological. If your body has the characteristics of a human female who is capable of reproduction, or who has been thus capable in the past, you can have one, no matter how many or few birthdays you've had. At the same time, we will be using Spider Bot's infrared lenses to identify padding, so don't you boys try to fool us. We shall start in the soccer field. See you there, ladies." As before, this announcement was also summarized on posters put up by brainbots throughout the city.

###

Testing of the Death Ray as a power supply began, with dramatic beams of light flashing down through the sky at all hours of the day and night. Many citizens were braced for an explosion, but it didn't come. After the first test lasting more than an hour, however, the cables overheated and the whole process had to be halted while they were replaced.

###

Madison's story met with skepticism, at first, from her fellow fans. It seemed too much like a fantasy encounter for some of them. But then went live, with the button in the upper right, just as he'd promised. The fans were all over the official site. Particularly popular were Minion's pages and a section called "Gallery: Prison Memories", which contained over a hundred sketches of young Megamind and Minion, sometimes with adult prisoners, all drawn by Luis Gutierrez, artist and forger, who drew them while serving twenty years for his part in the Omar Jenkins organization.

Roxanne had spent several hours working with Minion on the content of the website. She had met Tio Luis, an elderly Mexican-American shorter than herself and so scrawny that he made the Evil Overlord look burly. She'd seen men with that build before, in Mexico and Central America. They were the poorest of the poor, the ones who didn't own any shoes and who often went to bed hungry. It was explanation enough for why a man with so much artistic talent had chosen a life of crime, but it still saddened her. So did the pictures of Megamind and Minion as wide-eyed children, most of them, anyway. She thought of the sketch of the welding infant. Raised in a more suitable environment, he'd have grown up to make an amazing contribution, but what environment would have been suitable?

Meanwhile, the adult Megamind had gone through a phase of wanting to, as Omar predicted, fill it up with bragging, but she had managed to limit it to a one-minute evil monologue podcast at the beginning (which he could replace with another at any time) and a continuous Greatest Hits video loop showing the destruction of the observatory, the freeing of the prisoners and the taking of City Hall. It wasn't too hard to convince him that most of his weapons should remain mysterious rather than being shown in action on the website where his enemies could scrutinize them for weaknesses from the comfort of home. The announcements and the relevant news reports went into a blog.

At first, Megamind was shooting Minion new evil monologues to post a couple of times a day. The fish created an evil monologue archive. When Father Anthony Lalli, whose broadcast sermons were the region's most popular religious radio program, preached against the weapons giveaway as part of a theme of turning the other cheek, praying for those who mistreat you, and generally not resisting evil, Megamind devoted his next evil monologue to Father Lalli, praising his initiative, courage and intelligence, calling him "the kind of moral opponent every Evil Overlord ought to have and to value." He also had Minion put a link to the sermon on the website. Eventually, the evil monologue replacement rate settled down to about once a week.

###

Saturday evening. Darkness was falling. The soccer field in Simons Park was crowded with women, including Roxanne, who moved through the crowd with microphone in hand, trailed by Hal with his camera, doing spot interviews. Teams from the other stations were doing the same. The women were of all ages, sizes and ethnicities, but were almost all poor or working-class, the kind who might struggle to afford self-defense gear if they had to buy it. She heard stories of repeated muggings, rapes, domestic abuse. (One woman stood there with a suitcase, saying that once she had an electroshock weapon, she was going to night court to start divorce proceedings.) There was a figure in a burka whom Roxanne particularly wanted to interview, but who would slide away through the crowd whenever the camera came close. Two of her interviewees mentioned the rumor that the free weapons were in some way booby-trapped, that they would turn everyone who used them, or perhaps everyone on whom they were used, into mind-controlled slaves. Both brought it up in order to say they didn't believe it, although the woman with the suitcase said she wished that would happen to her soon-to-be-ex-husband.

She found Omar Jenkins in a crowd of his female relatives, all dressed up as though for church on Sunday. Some of them admitted they were there only because either Omar or his sister Shondra Jenkins Greene, whom they called Big Mama, made them come. Shondra Greene, a very black old woman who wore an auburn pageboy wig and leaned on a walker, went into a rant about young people these days, how they were soft and couldn't take care of themselves, and how nobody was going to say that about her girls. (The girls in question, the eldest of whom were middle-aged and accompanied by their own daughters, looked as if they wished they were somewhere else.)

A snarl of electric guitar music ("Christmas / Sarajevo 12/24" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra), accompanied by bowging, heralded the arrival of the Evil Overlord. Suddenly the sky was full of brainbots, and more were moving in at ground level, clearing a path. Spotlights lit up a circle of seemingly empty grass and suddenly Spider Bot appeared, with Minion at the controls and Megamind in the gun turret. Megamind's cape was red with white fur trim and Minion had an unmistakeable Santa's elf hat perched on his tank. Some of the brainbots carried bags full of boxes, and had reindeer antlers mounted on their domes. Roxanne stifled a giggle.

Spider Bot moved further into the center of the field as the crowd became a little thinner. It really did move like a giant spider; the arachnophobes were fleeing. Then it stopped. The music faded out and was replaced by the voice of the Overlord.

"Welcome to the give-away, ladies. One at a time, if you please. You've got to be ready to look trouble in the face." The news cameras moved in. "Who's first?" Roxanne wasn't surprised to see the Jenkins women move up, forming a line as they got closer. Some of their eyes got as round as Minion's when they addresed the blue man, but none of them hesitated, and each came away with the weapon of her choice. Others joined the line behind them. Hal got a side shot of Omar standing back and looking proud while a toddler boy clung to his leg, then swung around to catch a Jenkins teenager, who looked like she'd be more comfortable in athletic clothes than in the dress and high heels she was wearing, putting on her new brass knuckles and taking a swing at an imaginary attacker.

Roxanne moved in for another spot interview and the other news teams fanned out, talking with those in line and those coming away with their gifts. Another news team approached the figure in the burka when she was about fifth in line and got a headshake. Nevertheless, since this was the only person present in traditional Moslem dress, every news camera in the field focused as she came up to Spider Bot and said something that wasn't quite clear.

"What's that?" asked Megamind, leaning forward and cupping his hand behind his ear, and every camera caught the ball of pink fire that came at him from the figure's right hand. He ducked sideways, but not far enough; the fireball struck his shoulder and splattered onto his arm and the side of his face. As he shrieked, several brainbots converged on the figure in the burka, one clamping itself onto the hand that had just released the fireball, the others biting wherever they could reach (provoking a shriek from the attacker that matched Megamind's), while one bot produced a nozzle from its underside and began spraying him with white foam.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Roxanne said, going instantly into battle-reporting mode. "Megamind has just been hit by a ball of pink fire, the signature attack of the supervillainess Hot Flash. He has responded with biting brainbots." Spider Bot kicked the figure away. More pink fire sprayed from the left hand onto Spider Bot's undercarriage. Minion's metal fist, extended directly from his shoulder, passed through the air where the veiled head had been while another brainbot flew in and began applying foam to the new flames. "Counterattacks have also come from Spider Bot and Minion, interrupting the launch of a second fireball, which has struck Spider Bot instead of the Overlord."

The fireball thrower flew a good fifteen feet, knocking down the woman behind her while others fled, or dropped and rolled if they were directly in her way. Hal swung the camera with his usual expertise, following the action. "It looks like a bystander has been hit." As the mechanical arm retracted, Megamind, now with foam on his face that ironically resembled one side of a white beard, took hold of Spider Bot's big gun and swung it around to face his attacker. He held his fire for a moment. The figure was indistinguishable under the mass of brainbots all struggling to get a bite in. Spider Bot moved closer. "Megamind is bringing up a dehydration weapon, but it looks like his line of fire is blocked by his own brainbots." Pink flames suddenly engulfed two of the brainbots, which fell off, charred and inert, their domes grey with smoke. At the same moment, the figure slipped out the bottom of the burka on the side away from Spider Bot, so that the brainbots still clutching the empty cloth formed a kind of cover between her and the big dehydration gun. "Now the attacker is abandoning her disguise, and it is definitely Hot Flash."

As she rose to run, two gunshots rang out. Spots of pink flame spurted from the side of her costume, but she kept running. The brainbots gave chase, dropping the empty burka, but by then she was among the trees, hiding and dodging and flinging more fireballs into the branches. "She is apparently using fireballs as decoys to confuse the brainbots, and it seems to be working." Spider Bot, its infrared cameras still able to pick her out, went after her. Megamind fired and kept firing, never quite hitting her, but dehydrating a tree with every miss. "Megamind is going directly on the attack, eliminating her cover."

Abruptly the villainess turned and deliberately flung a fireball at Roxanne. It struck the reporter's hip, splashed across her torso and thigh and penetrated instantly to her skin. She screamed, started to slap at the flames, and suddenly the world was going blue and the air was crushing her. She heard another shot and Hal's voice shout "Roxie!"...

...and the next thing she knew, she was lying on a gurney and a medical team was gathered around her, working fast, getting her clothes off and attaching tubes and sensors._ I'm safe_, she thought, and then the pain arrived. She gritted her teeth and whimpered and it got worse. She struggled not to scream or squirm, but her reflexes were getting away from her.

"Morphine!" one of the medical people said over her shoulder, and another one came forward with a hypodermic. Roxanne normally hated needles, but that one was the most beautiful sight she'd seen in a long time. Out of habit she looked away as it went in and saw that, where she was burned, the pantyhose had fused to her skin; the person with the blunt-tipped scissors was cutting around it because it couldn't be pulled away. For a moment she fought down nausea and then everything started to feel good and her vision was getting grey and fuzzy and that was okay...

The next several days were composed of lots of sleep, hospital routine and alternations of pain with medication-induced fuzzy-headedness. Her sleep cycle was totally disrupted; she might wake up at any hour, day or night. She lay on her unburned side with a kind of tent in the bed holding the sheet off her lower body. Both her hands were bandaged and splinted, with plastic mesh bubbles keeping anything from touching her burned palms and fingerpads. She had to be fed. She had to have help using the toilet and bathing. When she wanted to make a phone call, someone had to put the hands-free set on her head, although she had a new phone with a giant keypad so she could dial with her big clumsy bandanged fingers. They weren't any slower than her medicated brain. Her mother was always there, steadfastly, and would get Roxanne anything she asked for except video clips of the coverage of the battle. She said Roxanne should avoid thinking about stressful thngs like work.

One afternoon, coming out of sleep, she could hear her mother's voice and Hal's.

"...understand, Mrs. R. He listens to her. In fact, it's really Roxanne that's running the city. She tells him what orders to give."

"She told you this and she didn't tell me?" Roxanne had learned to convey skepticism by imitating exactly that tone of her mother's voice.

"She didn't tell me. I was there. That first order, where he told the banks to come and get their money back? I filmed that."

Roxanne found her voice. "Hal's exaggerating, Mom. I have some influence." She managed to get her eyes open. To her surprise, Hal was lying face down on a gurney, wearing a hospital gown, with another one of those tents holding up a sheet over the lower half of his body. "Hey, did you get hurt, too?"

"Yeah. Stupid injury. She got me in the butt." Roxanne squeezed her eyelids tightly together, suppressing a laugh. She knew that buttock injuries are often neglected because that body part isn't taken seriously.

"Hot Flash?"

"Yeah. It was right after you got cubed, whaddayacall it, dehydrated. I bent over to pick you up, take you to an ambulance, and she nailed me. Then Megamind nailed me, too, and somebody had to come and get both of us."

"So that's why you were talking about him?"

"No. It's this letter your mom got."

"Let me read it," said her mother. She read from a piece of blue paper. "Dear Mrs. Monahan. Hey, at least he bothered to find out my last name. Please inform Roxanne that any costs of treatment for her injuries which are not covered by her insurance will be covered by me, personally. This includes whatever cosmetic surgery is needed to eliminate scars. I will also take care of any expenses accumulated by you and any other members of Roxanne's family in assisting her recovery. You can send the bills and receipts to Minion at City Hall. Villainously yours, Megamind."

"Wow," Roxanne said. She thought of Omar's description of how he took care of the families of his gunmen. "Hal, did your family get a letter like that?"

"Yeah, but mine didn't say anything about cosmetic surgery. Tanya Johnstone's did. Hot Flash got her in the face. She might not work again for, like, a year." Tanya was a reporter for Channel Five. "I guess he doesn't think scars on my butt are so important."

"Come on, Hal. I know you. As soon as you're healed, you're going to go shopping for a pair of shorts that'll show some of the scar, so people will ask you about it, so you can brag about your combat journalism experience." Hal looked sheepish but didn't deny it.

"You know," said her mom. "In all the years he was kidnapping you, he never put you in the hospital. Never gave you anything worse than a rope burn."

"No," Roxanne agreed. "He was always pretty careful about not hurting anyone who wasn't actually fighting him. Listen, Mom. I need to see those news clips. I can't stand Hal being better informed than me."

###

The first clip was KMCP's own coverage of the battle. Hal's camera had actually followed the fireball from Hot Flash's hand to Roxanne and caught her moment on fire before the dehydration ray struck her. Then the report went to grainy citizen-shot video. Hot Flash, dodging Spider Bot among the trees, was deliberately targeting the news crews and the few bystanders who had not fled the area. Every time she hit somebody, Megamind immediately dehydrated the victim, which kept him too busy to get a bead on her. After she hit Tanya, Minion leaped from Spider Bot and went after her on foot. At that point, she abandoned the cover of the trees and sprinted for the fieldhouse. She was dehydrated about halfway there. Minion picked up the cube, held it up and Spider Bot played a few bars of "We are the Champions" by Queen, accompanied by Megamind's amplified laughter. Emergency responders began to move in immediately, gathering up the dehydration cubes, putting out the fires and checking on the uncubed humans. Minion climbed back aboard Spider Bot, handed the cube that was Hot Flash over to his boss and took a look at the Evil Overlord's injuries.

Next came the Channel Five and Channel Seven reports. She had to admit that Seven had the best video because the camerawoman, Ruth Ezekiel, had gone up in a tree as soon as the first fireball hit, so she had captured an overhead view of most of the battle, while her reporter, Daniella Cruz, had dropped flat and held up her microphone. Daniella was one of the people with minor burns.

As for Five's coverage, well, you could tell Tanya and Dinnie McAlister had only worked human interest before this. They made no effort to follow the action. Instead, the camera looked for bystander reaction, victims going down and zoom-ins on the faces of the combatants. Their best shot was two seconds of Omar Jenkins running back toward the fight, drawing his pistol, while his family shouted after him. (Roxanne was pretty sure she could read "old fool" on Shondra Greene's lips.) After Tanya went down, there was a good side shot of Minion running and then the best footage of the battle's conclusion.

All these reports had gone out live. The follow-up reports that aired at eleven added that five people, including Roxanne and Hal, had been admitted to the burn unit of Mercy Hospital, while three others had suffered minor burns, and added that all the trees that had been dehydrated had died. Then there was a shot of a pink-and-black motorcycle, which had been found in the fieldhouse. It was believed to be Hot Flash's intended getaway vehicle. Last was a return to Spider Bot, walking through the park as the Evil Overlord's voice announced that the distribution of non-lethal weapons would continue, and a reporter for each station saying that it was continuing even as the report went out.

Channel Eight had a brief interview with Omar, his hand bandaged. "See, I knew that Hot Flash [bleep] back in the day," the old man said, "and I remembered that even though bullets wouldn't stop her, they distracted her some. So that's what I was going for: a little distraction. I think I spoiled her aim a little when she went for that gal who was in the grass with the microphone sticking up, but then she got my gun hand. Doctor says it'll be all right. Anyway, it was worth it, you know, just to feel like I did something."

Later stories reported that the weapons had all been given away in the end, with a burst of interest just after 2 a.m., when the bars closed. They were in great demand with cocktail waitresses, strippers and other women who dealt with drunken men in the course of their work. Also, one goth club DJ had actively promoted the distribution during last call, causing half the club to show up. The Evil Overlord was reported to be using only his left arm, and remnants of foam were still visible on his face and costume.

One of the doctors who had been treating Roxanne was interviewed about the burns suffered in the battle. This doctor had seen Hot Flash's victims before; she remarked that the immediate dehydration, which put out the flames, had made for much less serious injuries. The main problem with it was that dehydration cubes were symmetrical on all sides, so unless they had been picked up with careful attention to which side of the cube was up, patients might come out of it in any orientation, perhaps head down, perhaps sideways, perhaps lying directly on their burns. It was also easy to mix up the cubes, since they all looked alike. First aid was severely disrupted for several minutes when a cube believed to be an elderly woman with minor burns turned out to be a thirty-foot Norway maple.

Next up was a ten-minute analysis of the battle by Bernard Schmidt, who was still the city's resident expert on the local supers in spite of the disappearance of his job when the museum was destroyed. He guessed that Minion had stayed in Spider Bot as long as he had because he could see better through the bot's infrared cameras. He also guessed that Hot Flash had not originally intended to act alone, that she'd had confederates who were to attack after she took Megamind out, but when he succeeded in dodging that first fireball, they ran out on her. Schmidt also gave fifty-fifty odds that Megamind would rehydrate her in order to question her about the identities of these allies.

After that, the reports petered out. There was a short piece on the damage to the park; a retrospective on Hot Flash's career; and a mention on Channel Seven's evening "tabloid" show, as part of a larger piece on the increase in prostitution under the Evil Overlord's rule, that some prostitutes had acquired weapons in the giveaway, and that was it. The battle made the national news and Super Action Round-Up, a weekly broadcast magazine that covered superhero and supervillain activity around the world, but both shows used recaps of the local coverage. The news cycle had rolled on.


	9. Chapter 9

Roxanne woke at three-twenty a.m. to find her mother asleep in the bedside chair and a figure standing over her in the dim glow of the monitors. It looked like a doctor, but his smell betrayed him.

"Megamind," she whispered. The "doctor" touched his watch, glowed blue for a moment and became the Evil Overlord, his right arm and shoulder held in a strange shiny metal contraption. He crouched down beside the bed and turned his head sideways, resting the front edge of his cheekbone and temple on the mattress so he was eye-to-eye with her. "What are you doing here?"

"I missed you. And since I happened to be in the hospital anyway to check its security, which is awful by the way, I wanted to come and see you."

"Checking security? You think we'll be attacked here?"

"Oh, I don't think anyone here is a target, but I intend to pay an official visit. It'll be announced tomorrow. And it seems that any time my presence in any particular location is known in advance, there's the possibility of an attack. So I'm checking. How are you, my love?"

"I'm only awake because my meds are wearing off. We have about a two-minute window before they wear off so much that I have to call the nurse and ask for some more, and then I'll be asleep again. How's the shoulder?"

"Numb as a fence post. Minion insisted on locking it into this brace because I kept forgetting and trying to use it."

"Would that numbing stuff work on a human?"

"It's not stuff. It's a physical nerve block. I suppose it could be tried on a human. Let me think about it."

"If it looks like it'll work, will you share it?"

"You mean let Minion do it to you? Certainly."

"I mean will you let him teach the hospital staff to do it?"

"You mean so they could do it to all their patients?"

"Yeah." He looked doubtful, so she continued. "It would suck for the drug companies, but none of them are in Metro City, so why not?"

"I know what you're doing, temptress. You're trying to tempt me to do something good."

"Yeah. You mind?"

"No, come to think of it, I don't. Tempt away."

"Later. Right now I need to call the nurse."

"Rest well, my love." He planted a kiss on her cheek, then rose. "I was never here."

After she called the nurse and received her shot, she lay there enjoying her last moments of being able to think._ I let him say "my love"? Is that bad? Am I, I don't know, leading him on or something?_ At the same time, the alternative Megamind, the one from the video, had become such a frequent character in her sexual fantasies that it didn't seem strange. It was almost as if she'd been a little unclear about which one had visited her, the Evil Overlord or the good blue man. _These meds are doing things to me_. Whichever, she found herself strangely, squishily glad he had come.

###

For the Overlord's visit to the burn ward, the five patients who were Hot Flash's victims were moved to the nearest visitors' lounge, just outside the sterile area of the ward itself. Brainbots with tools came and took the windows out of one window frame so it was just a big opening in the wall, four stories up, while others swept around the room, reaching under things and scrutinizing the equipment and furniture. Roxanne saw Tanya in an oval mask of stiff mesh like Olympic fencers wear. She wasn't speaking. Instead, she was typing on a small laptop computer with a second screen on its cover so that it could be read by people looking at her. There were patients' relatives and a few orderlies in the room, plus Danielle and Omar and an elderly Vietnamese woman who had a young one translating for her.

Roxanne fought her way through the brain fog of partial anesthesia enough to introduce Omar to her mother and Hal. Her mother went wide-eyed when she heard Omar's name. He politely failed to notice. Instead, he told them that he was "being a guinea pig for this nerve blocking thing that Minion does. He made me put this cage thing on it." He showed them an arrangement of steel rods enclosing his bandaged hand. "And it's a good thing, too, 'cause I don't feel this hand at all. I be banging it into things all the time."

At that point, Megamind pulled up outside the window on a hoverbike. In deference to being in a hospital zone, he had turned down the heavy metal music, but had not entirely gotten rid of it. He parked in the air and leaped in. His arm was still in the brace and there was a little spot of healing pink on his jaw.

"Good afternoon, everyone," he said. "I would like to start by inviting you all to join me in a moment of vengeful gloating." He reached under his leather yoke and pulled out a dehydration cube. "Here she is: our attacker."

"You're going to leave her that way, right?" asked Roxanne's mother, giving the cube the glare she used to give Megamind whenever she saw him on TV.

"I am, and to that end I have sealed the cube so that she can't be rehydrated by an accidental wetting. However, living creatures occasionally rehydrate spontaneously, so this cube will be returned to her old fireproof cell at MC Women's Prison, with monitoring so that I'll be notified if it happens. Any questions, comments, reactions?"

"Thank you for the letter." That was Tanya's mom.

"Oh, it was the least I could do, especially since she used one of my own early inventions for this. That fireball delivery system? I built that for her, so in a sense this is a balancing of my own account."

This was new. After a moment, someone said "Why?"

"Why did I build it? Well... I suppose the rule against kissing and telling is nullified when it comes to an ex who has attempted to assassinate me. For a period of about three months twenty years ago, Hot Flash was my girlfriend. When I first met her, she had the flaming touch, and had used that ability, first as an enforcer and arsonist for Uncle Omar, later as a supervillain in her own right, but she couldn't project. In the mistaken belief that we were destined for a long association, I developed the system, consisting of a reservoir built into her brassier holding gelled petro-lee-um with a little lithium carbonate for color, and a pump that would send a couple of ounces of it through a tube on each side going down the sleeve of her costume and into her palm, activated when she cocked back her shoulder to throw. That was how I was able to dodge her first fireball almost completely: I recognized that shoulder movement."

"Gelled petro - Napalm?" That was Roxanne's mom again.

"Yes, madam. Your daughter and her colleagues here are now among the few stateside journalists who can genuinely claim to have been napalmed in the line of duty."

Tanya's screen began to flash. Everyone waited as she typed out in inch-high letters "I.s t.h.i.s o.n t.h.e r.e.c.o.r.d.?.!.?" It got a laugh, which cut through Roxanne's lingering brain fog. She had associated Megamind so closely with the romantic image of the lonely genius, accompanied only by his faithful assistant, that it was a shock to realize that some woman besides herself had noticed this particular handsome hunk of blue manflesh.

"Do you really think the public would be interested in this bit of ancient history?" the hunk of blue manflesh asked.

"Y.e.s.!" blinked Tanya's screen, while a handful of voices, Roxanne's among them, agreed.

"Very well. You may say that at the time of the affair, I was near the beginning of my glorious career and as thoroughly at the mercy of my libido as any other male adolescent. Say further that, during the course of it, I became disillusioned with her. She mistreated Minion, abused prisoners, disregarded the safety of bystanders and, in general, showed the same lack of class that was so evident during this most recent attack. Finally, you may say that it ended with an argument over something petty and stupid that quickly became a conduit for the building tensions in the relationship and escalated into a full-scale battle that destroyed our headquarters and might have been to the death if not for the intervention of the hero then just beginning to be known as Metro Mahn. Add that when I freed her from MC Women's on the day of my victory, I suggested that we let bygones be bygones, she agreed, and I was just enough of a sentimental fool to believe her."

"And say one more thing," interjected Omar. "I warned you."

"Yes, you did. It was during one of my early incarcerations in MCPCG. I had just gotten her telephone number from one of the other prisoners. When Uncle Omar learned of it, he attempted to dissuade me from calling her. When I wouldn't listen, he told me to at least refrain from ever trusting her. I promised, then forgot my promise and had to learn the hard way. So you may chalk it all up to youthful folly on my part and wounded vanity on hers. I strongly suspect that her motivation for this attack was my failure to at least invite her over for a drink for old time's sake, during which she planned to attempt to worm her way back into my affections. It wouldn't have worked, of course, but at least I'd have been expecting her to try something and been a little better prepared. Oh, and if you can find some footage of her from those days, I think it will show just what her appeal would have been for a youth aspiring to supervillainy." He held out the cube, tossed it in the air and caught it a couple of times. "So. Anyone want to say goodbye and good riddance?" No one did, althought there was a little more laughter. He tucked the cube away. "Very well, then. I shall leave you to your healing. May it be swift and uncomplicated. Adieu." He gave a courtly little bow, like a Shakespearean actor.

As his audience called out goodbyes, he turned and leaped into the hoverbike. The music started up again as he glided away. Roxanne excused herself to Omar and Hal, saying she had to call the station. Her mother was already getting out her phone. Danielle was also on the phone and Tanya was typing away. The brainbots were reassembling the window. _Wow. Nobody freaked out. And he didn't do an evil monologue. It was pretty civilized_.

###

Testing resumed on the use of the Death Ray for electrical power. After a six-hour test that lit up the city through half of one weekday night, people began to understand that this beam from the sky was going to be a permanent part of their lives.

The next Friday evening, just after rush hour, a cloud of brainbots descended on the Hall of Records. Some of them put up sawhorses and hazard tape, blocking off access to the sidewalks around the building. Others set down equipment on the roof and began assembling machines and uncoiling wire. Then more began arriving with black objects about eight feet long, shaped into three-quarter cylinders roughly a foot in diameter. The Hall of Records was mostly glass, with steel framing only at the corners. The curved black things fitted over the framing. Saturday's dawn revealed that the Hall of Records now appeared to be held up by stacks of old-fashioned vinyl records.

At the top of the building was a giant model of a 1950s juke box, featuring speakers that were quite real. The first person brave enough to touch one of the stacks of records set off a song. Shockingly, it wasn't a heavy metal song; it was the first movement of Brahms' "Cello Sonata in F". Experiments by curious citizens discovered that the thing really was a giant free juke box. Each "record" in each of the four stacks would, when touched by bare fingers, set off a different song. The northeast corner was all symphonic and chamber music, mostly from the Romantic period; the northwest corner, heavy metal, blues and classic rock; the southwest corner, show tunes and movie sound track music; the southeast corner, jazz and adult contemporary.

By Saturday evening, a self-appointed group of music geeks had begun cataloging the selections. On Sunday two of them showed up with suction cups attached to their elbows and knees and began to climb the glass in order to identify the songs available on the upper floors. By the end of the week, a complete catalog appeared on a student page of the Metro City Community College website. It was widely copied. A second group, not associated with the first, printed out the entire catalog on sticky labels and began labeling the selections by sticking the labels onto the windows.

The week after that, the event's only fatality was reported when a freshly jilted drunk, after suction-cupping himself up to the third floor and playing "Who Can I Turn To?" eleven times in a row, fell to his death. The fall took place at about four a.m. on a Tuesday. No eye witnesses came forward, so rumors that he was pushed could not be confirmed or denied. After all, who would care enough to climb up there and push him? The advocates of the murder theory argued that even brainbots must have their limits.

###

There was a spate of new businesses opening in Metro City over the next few weeks, mostly gun ranges, martial arts studios and shops selling weapons and body armor. Omar Jenkins opened a pistol range. Under normal circumstances, neither he nor any other convicted felon would have been permitted to carry any firearms, much less open a gun-related business, but as an associate of the Evil Overlord, he was allowed to do as he liked.

###

Roxanne was in a strange contraption that resembled a massage chair; it had a face cradle, a padded shelf for her arms and another, tilted, for her chest. The difference was that massage chairs usually had a seat but this one had a kneeler because sitting would have folded the burn on her hip, and that would be bad. It also had a kind of modesty panel that covered her butt without touching the hip burn. It had been built especially for her, for this demonstration. It emitted a low-pitched hum that she could feel more than see.

She wasn't entirely happy to be in it in a hospital gown in front of a large crowd that she couldn't see because the face cradle reduced her area of visibility to her own elbows resting on the arm shelf, but this whole thing had been her idea, so she felt obligated. Besides, it would probably have been worse for some of the other burn patients, who didn't have her experience giving clear descriptions to an audience.

"How's your pain, Ms. Ritchi?" asked Minion, his voice echoing slightly in the operating theater.

She had to struggle to make her mouth work. "On a one-to-ten scale where ten is screaming hysteria, it's about an eight." Her words were a little slurred.

"And it sounds like the muscle relaxant has taken effect."

"Oh, yeah." She couldn't get up if she wanted to. Lying limp in the contraption was her only option. One of the burn ward doctors had just finished describing Roxanne's injuries and the treatment she'd received to the crowd of medical people that formed the audience. Then Minion, in the modified suit he'd worn to the dinner at Romanov's, repainted the pale green of surgical scrubs, had taken the doctor's place to demonstrate the nerve-blocking process.

"Now, if we want to block particular nerves, the first thing we need is to be able to see them. That's what this device is for. I put the sensors here and here." She felt the air move as he attached one sensor arm to each side of her chair. "These are triple sensors that detect stray electrical energy from the nervous system, the ultrasound signal that's being sent through the chair and infrared. The processing unit right here puts them together into a 3D image and sends it to the screen. Can everybody see this?" She knew that there was a large screen above her as well as a smaller one facing Minion. "You'll notice that some of the nerves are lit up a little more brightly than the rest. Those are the ones that are carrying the pain signals. Now, if it weren't for the muscle relaxant, her muscles would be tensing up in response to the pain, the nerves to them would be putting out their own signals and the nerves coming from the injuries wouldn't show up so distinctly, so the muscle relaxant is essential. Now I'm going to zoom in on this nerve bundle right here."

The administrative head of the hospital had refused to allocate a room for the demonstration. He'd said that the treatment hadn't been tested in double-blind tests, published in any of the appropriate journals or subjected to peer review. Megamind had fired him on the spot and ordered his secretary to make the allocation. She had done it without arguing. The ex-administrator was still on staff as a surgeon. In fact, he was there in the audience, his initial skeptical hostility giving way to fascination as the lecture went on.

"Next, I'm gonna split the screen and, on the left, I'm going to put up a picture of the physical nerve block itself. It's this thing that looks like a nail. The shaft is thinner than a human hair. It splits into two arms with pinchers on the ends. The other end has a radio receiver in it, smaller than a grain of rice, that lets me control the opening and closing of the pinchers." Even a week ago, she wouldn't have been able to do this, but the skin grafts were taking and the pain was bearable. It helped that her sister had taught her some of the breathing techniques she'd learned in natural childbirth class. Roxanne was using one of them now. "Nobody has the manual dexterity to place the block on a particular neuron, so we use this thing. it's called a waldo. It steps down the movements of your hand so you can control things at the micrometer scale. I'm going to set the first block on the surface of the skin right now. Ms. Ritchi, you're going to feel something like a mosquito bite."

If he hadn't mentioned it, Roxanne wouldn't have noticed when it pierced the skin on the back of her neck, the sensation was so faint compared to all the other pain she was dealing with.

"And there it is on the screen. The software is programmed to recognize it. Now I use the waldo to maneuver it into the approach." It felt like the mosquito was really digging for a vein. "We use the 3D to watch the approach from a couple of different angles, make sure we're in the right place. Now we open the pinchers, move it forward that last teeny tiny bit aaannnnd...there." The pain in her right hand stopped so suddenly that Roxanne let out a little squeak. Her left hand and torso burns were still hurting, but the reduction in total discomfort was massive. "How was that, Ms. Ritchi?"

"Like you found the switch for the pain in my right hand and just turned it off."

"Great. Just what we wanted. Now I'm going to touch the back of your hand. How does that feel?"

"It doesn't. I'm taking your word for it that you're touching me because I can't feel anything."

"Thank you, Ms. Ritchi. This is the most dangerous thing about this procedure: the affected body part has no sensation at all, but the motor nerves still work, so she could reinjure herself if the hand isn't protected. So this is what we came up with for hands. We call it a clamshell for obvious reasons. The bottom half goes under like this, the top closes over it and the wrist strap adjusts like this. Can you feel the clamshell, Ms. Ritchi?"

"A little."

"The wrist is right on the edge of the affected area. Now I'm going to set the blocks for the torso and thigh burns, which are a little more complicated, and then I'll have Dr. Wilson come back and set the block for the left hand."

An hour and a half later, two orderlies more or less poured Roxanne back into her bed. It would be at least half an hour before she could move, but she didn't care. She was pain-free and clear-headed, the first time since the battle that she'd been both things at once for more than a few minutes. She was ridiculously happy about it. _The next time I see either one of those aliens, I'm going to kiss him. _

But that night she woke to the sound of a spray can and saw Megamind just standing up from dosing her mother, and she changed her mind.

"Wanted to make sure we were undisturbed, huh?"

"Your mother has the protective attitude of a tigress with her cub, which I find admirable, but it would be inapproopriate here and now."

"Oh? Planning on saying something out of line?"

"No, no. It's just that my first personal encounter with her is very likely to begin with her giving me all those stored-up pieces of her mind. It would take all night, and I'll never get to my request."

"Request?"

"See what you can find out about this fellow." He pulled out his phone and showed her a web page. It was a typical "employee introduction" page, similar to Roxanne's page on the KMCP website, all text except for the face of a balding man with a short, mostly white beard and glasses in the upper left. The name at the top was Pietro Olivetti. This Olivetti was a geologist at the Lugano Institute for Mineral Sciences, Lugano, Switzerland. There was a list of his publications, conferences where he'd been a presenter, a prize he had won. "I'd like you to find out everything you can about him," the Overlord continued. "Not what's available on the Web. Minion's done that already. I mean what you can find out by word of mouth, especially anything odd."

"Why?"

"I'd rather not bias your investigation by telling you. Just find out all you can, all right? It's not for any nefarious purpose, I promise."

"Okay on one condition. I'll gather the data, but you have to tell me why you want it for before I turn it over to you."

"Very well, my mistrustful investigator."

"And have Minion send me what he's found. It'll save me some time."

"I will. By the way, you'll be amused to know that I've just been denounced."

She laughed softly. "By?"

"The little association that puts on the supervillains' convention."

"What are they denouncing you for?"

"Coddling the citizens, mostly. Failing to spread terror. Oh, and undermining master-servant relations with my offer of citizenship for intelligent non-humanoids."

"And how many of them have non-humanoid servants that they treat like dirt because they figure the servants have nowhere else to go?"

"Only one, but that's not their main motivation. I've put them in a rather sticky position. They can't hold the convention in Metrocity because I've opened the door for any dissatisfied servants that want to jump ship, but if they hold it anywhere else, I won't come, and the whole reason villains come to these things is to make powerful allies. I'm the most successful supervillain in the world right now and if I won't be there, what's the point?"

"Hey, if it wouldn't be out of line for me to know, do you have any other supervillains as allies?"

"Only one, and she's rather distant: Starlight in San Diego. Wonderful smuggler, and her access to Pacific shipping perfectly compliments mine to the Atlantic, so we're in a position to do each other favors without any conflicts of interest or anything to compete over. Aside from her, I've never met another supervillain whom I'd both trust enough to want as an ally and have anything to gain from allying myself with."

"Is she another ex-girlfriend of yours?"

"How on Earth did you deduce that?"

"I didn't. It's just that after your little revelation about Hot Flash, I'm going to be wondering that about every woman in Spandex whose name you know."

He laughed at that, making an effort to keep his chuckling quiet. "Well, when you know about Hot Flash and Starlight, you know the entire extent of my experience with, er, women in Spandex." He leaned closer. "Ms. Ritchi, you wouldn't be jealous, would you?"

"Wha? Wh..." She sputtered for a moment, a little indignant but mostly just flustered. Then she got a breath and and tried to answer him. "Jealous... isn't quite the word. Jealously implies a sense of ownership. You're the Evil Overlord. You can never belong to anybody."

"Oh, but I can," he said, and the humor was gone from his face, replaced by longing. "Just reach out your hand to me, and I am yours."

She didn't consciously make a decision about it, but her hand began to rise from the bedclothes, almost on its own. It was going toward his face, and then she looked at it, all bandaged inside the clamshell, and the idea of making a romantic gesture with that appendage made her laugh.

He didn't laugh. He bent down close, lifting under her elbow so that the appendage in question slid around his back, and kissed her. Roxanne was surprised at how normal the kiss was, right down to the smell of coffee on his breath. She kissed back. He began to press in a little more seriously and she tasted his underlying flavor, close to human, not quite the same. She liked it.

She wasn't sure how long they kissed. Long enough that her mother made a noise. Just a little "Mmm," but they both looked up, startled. Roxanne's mother's eyelids were fluttering. Megamind stood quickly, did something to his watch, and his doctor disguise came back.

"Thank you, Ms. Ritchi," he said, and she noticed that he was faking a very slight foreign accent. "I appreciate you're allowing me to examine the site of these new nerve blocks."

"Hey, no problem, Doctor Aziz," she said, giving him the first foreign-sounding surname she could think of. "I happened to be awake, so you might as well. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Ms. Ritchi." He hurried away, as if he had rounds to do. Roxanne lay still, wondering how much of that little act her mother had seen.

"That was him," said the older woman. "That doctor disguise is very good, but it was him."

"Yeah. That was him."

"You know, I used to think that whole idea of a bad man reforming under the influence of a good woman was a lie that society's propaganda machine made up in the days before feminism, to keep us from seeing how powerless we really were. But you're doing it, aren't you?"

"Trying."

"Honey, a man who calls himself evil just released a medical breakthrough that's going to make a difference in the lives of millions of people because you suggested it. You're doing great, just like you always do. Listen, do you think you're well enough now that I can start sleeping at home?"

"Thank you for understanding, Mom. Yeah, that would be a good idea."

After her mother had gone home, she lay thinking about what had just happened. _He said "Just reach out your hand to me and I am yours." And I did. So I guess that means he's mine now? With all the responsibility that implies? Come on, Roxanne. You took on this job months ago. This just makes it official._ Her lips still burned from his kiss. Official in a private way. And that could have... perks. She went to sleep with the thought that this was the first time since the bandages went on her hands that she was specifically unhappy that they prevented her from masturbating._ I must be getting well._


	10. Chapter 10

When her mother came back in the morning, she reminded Roxanne to call Minion and thank him, so that's what she did right after breakfast.

"Hi, Ms. Ritchi. How are you feeling?"

"Incredibly better, Minion. I am so grateful."

"Hey, I'm grateful to you, too. I have gotten some amazing fan mail since the site went up." She had never heard the fish so excited. "I kind of knew I had fans already, from going on the boss' fan sites, but now I get actual fan mail that's just to me. Also, I walked to the hardware store the other day to get wire, _without a disguise_. Some people ran away when they saw me, but some just looked and then went back to their business and a few actually waved, and this teenage boy shouted 'The Hall of Records rocks!' Then when I got into the store, I could tell the clerk was nervous around me, but he kept it together enough to get me my wire. I went to the register and the cashier said 'This is for the Overlord? Then it's free.' I asked her if she was sure and she said 'Just tell him. We'd rather have his goodwill.' So I said I would and she thanked me! And called me Sir! And wished me a nice day! So I should thank you, because you made this happen."

Roxanne smiled into the phone. "I didn't do it all. You work hard on that website."

"Yeah, but it was your idea. I'd have never even imagined this."

"Well, then...you're welcome."

"You're welcome, too, Ms. Ritchi. Hey, I heard from the boss that your relationship got, ah, taken to the next level." Note to self: Megamind tells Minion _everything. _

"Yeah. I didn't plan on that. It just kind of happened, but now that it has, I'm not taking it back."

"Well... See, here's the thing, Ms. Ritchi. The people the boss has been involved with in the past have mostly done a lot more taking than giving, so I'm always kind of nervous when he starts up with a new person, but you're cool."

"I'm glad I have your approval."

"Well, you earned it. Hey, you want to talk to him? He's right here."

"Sure."

"Ollo, my love."

"Hi, handsome. Just so you know, my mother is onto us, and she's decided to start sleeping at home."

"Now, that is a truly gracious lady. Not terribly surprising, considering that she produced you, but good news nevertheless."

"So can I expect you tonight?"

"Absolutely. Shall we say two?"

After the phone call, Roxanne spent a little time online, researching Starlight. The West Coast super was described as an eccentric of uncertain alignment, equally likely to perform a heist or a rescue. She was publicity-shy and operated only at night, so very little was known about her. One of the few available photos showed her in a black costume with tiny dots of silver scattered randomly across it, as if designed to provide camouflage when seen against a clear night sky. She wore a mask of the same fabric that concealed her entire face and had similar dots of silver in her dark hair. The most obvious mark of Megamind's influence was her most characteristic piece of equipment, a thing called (by the media) a tri-gripper. It resembled a set of bolas, but with claws on the ends instead of simple weights. It seemed to have some self-propulsion capability, so that once she threw it, it could maneuver in the air, and some independent decision-making capacity. Sounded like it was related to brainbots.

The visit that night started without words. She opened her eyes to find him gazing at her face, smiled back at him and held up an arm to embrace him as he came in for a kiss. The kissing led to nuzzling of her cheek and ear and throat and collarbone. Then he gently eased the hospital gown off her shoulder and seemed pleased to find that she wasn't wearing a bra. Roxanne's nipples were very responsive. It didn't take him long to figure out the best stimulation to get little moans out of her. She wanted him to put his hand between her thighs, but she wasn't sure whether it would be dangerous for her hip and thigh injuries. Suddenly he stopped, sat up listening for a moment, and then leaped over the bed and ducked down behind it. At that moment, a nurse came in.

"Roxanne? Are you okay?" The nurses always used first names. "Your heart rate is very elevated."

"I'm fine. Really. I was, well, I was... having a sexual fantasy. You probably think I'm a little nuts."

"That would explain it. Look, I know it can get pretty lonely here at night, but try not to get too turned on, okay? It makes the monitors go nuts." The nurse pulled Roxanne's gown back up over her shoulder and left the room.

"That was quite irritating," he whispered, just behind her, "but at the same time quite flattering."

"Flattering?"

"One of the frustrations of being a heterosexual male is that women have no expressive appendage, so it's usually impossible to be sure whether a woman really wants a man or whether she's pretending because she want something from him. In this case, the heart monitor told me just what I wanted to hear. It's too bad that the same heart monitor keeps us from having the priv-acy" (he pronounced it with a short i like in will) "to take our mutual attraction any further."

"Yeah, but it's for the best. We need to have the talk first."

"The talk?"

"You know. The full disclosure talk, where we tell each other our sexual histories and disease status and kinks and everything else that's relevant, so we go into this with fully informed consent."

"Er... everything?"

"Got some secrets, huh?"

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to preserve the sense of mystery?"

"Got some secrets you really don't want to tell, huh?"

"Why don't we just trust each other?"

"That line doesn't work on nosy reporters. Come around where I can see you, Fantasy Man, and I'll go first. And don't worry so much. I know you're not really human and I know you didn't have a normal upbringing, so whatever it is you don't want to tell me, I probably won't freak out over it when you do."

He sighed. "All right."

When he had moved the bedside chair into her line of vision and settled into it, with a worried look despite her reassurance, she began.

"First of all, my parents both believed that hiding things from people is a way of controlling them, limiting their freedom, so they always answered my questions about sex and everything else. I don't remember a time when I didn't know where babies come from, and when I heard terms like blow job and pearl necklace, they didn't hesitate to explain. I got in trouble once for telling one of the other little girls in the neighborhood about it."

"Your first act of reportage."

"Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way. At the same time, they also taught me that I had the right to say no and to defend myself, that I didn't have to do whatever a boy wanted me to do, plus I got a lot of warnings about disease and pregnancy and playing with guys' feelings. And those are still my base values: honesty, integrity, mutual respect and the awareness that the sex drive is powerful and it can hurt as easily as it can make things better. Your turn."

"Oh, well I suppose that part's easy enough. Yes, that's something we have in common: the prisoners saw no reason to hide anything from me, although they did have their biases. For example, I knew that human women, those mysterious creatures I had seen only from a distance, had, in addition to the usual orifices on either end of the digestive tract, a third opening that was just for sex. What sex had to do with reproduction was not so clear at first. There was a brief time when, through an overliteral misinterpretation of the term 'knocked up', I thought humans were conceived by punching. Even after that was cleared up, I continued to think of homosexual relationships as the ordinary sort, with all the banality and drama and complications of real life, but heterosexual relationships as exotic, mysterious and entirely about the sex. In terms of values, I was given decidedly mixed messages, with Uncle Omar telling me that I must always make sure my woman knows who's boss and then Uncle Lefty taking me aside and explaining that Omar had never really been in love, that he didn't know what real love was like and that respect had to be mutual or love had no chance of lasting. And I did observe that Lefty's wife, once her own sentence was completed, visited him faithfully each week, while none of the many women Omar bragged about ever came to see him; only his mother and his sister."

"That's sad."

"I felt the same, but I knew better than to ever let Omar know I'd felt pity for him over anything. There were those who told me that pussy is what makes life worth living and those who told me that women were all out to hurt a man and I would be better off without them. There were three who thought I would make an adequate substitute for a woman. The first of them approached me when I was, oh, four or five, I suppose. Uncle Alphonse and Tio Fernando intervened after I gave a shout. A guard stopped them from beating him, then when he found out what they were beating him for, he contributed a couple of blows with his nightstick and marched him away. That one was moved to another institution; we never saw him again. After that, my uncles began to give me serious training in self-defense. When the second one tried for me, I gave him a good solid groin kick and he never bothered me again. As for the third, I still can't find it in me to be angry with him. He didn't try to force me or mislead me about what he wanted. He was very polite and respectful and was really trying to gain my consent. I just wasn't interested. It was partly to get away from him that I started planning to escape for good, to start on my criminal career. Is that adequate?"

"Yeah, that's good. Okay, round two. For all my parents' warnings, they forgot to tell me is that there are diseases you can get just from making out. And that's what happened to me just after I turned fifteen."

"I presume you're talking about a member of the herpes family of viruses."

"Nope. Mono. Mononucleosis. They call it the kissing disease because that's one of the most common ways it's transmitted. The thing is, I got it from my first boyfriend and he got it from kissing some other girl, when he told me he'd never kissed any girls before me. I wouldn't have minded about the other girl, but he lied to me, and that was why I broke up with him. I can't stand a man who lies about important things. Just so you know."

"I shall bear that in mind."

"That ended with a lesson in the power of information. I was so mad at him, I decided to tell the whole school, so I made it a joke: he gave me a disease and I didn't even get any sex. No girl would have anything to do with him after that - and no boy, except the losers and the sleazeballs, would have anything to do with me, so I was still a virgin when I graduated. College was different. The University of Michigan is a huge school, forty thousand students. I was kind of intimidated. There was a lot of irresponsible sex going on, and after the scare I'd had in high school, I wasn't too interested in joining in. Instead, I had crushes on faculty members, which I would never act on because they were married. Then one of them got divorced and I fell right into his arms. In a lot of ways it was a good first sexual relationship. He was a really kind, decent man, and he hadn't fooled around on his wife, so he was clean, no diseases, but it was a rebound relationship. I spent six months being half girlfriend, half therapist, came home, spent the summer exchanging passionate emails with him, and when I got back to campus, he had somebody else."

"He must have been a complete fool."

"No, he just recovered from his divorce and realized that he wanted someone his own age. So I threw myself into my studies. A few days after I was dumped, one of the lesbian activists in my dorm talked me into trying gay sex. It was one night and I ended up having to fantasize about men to get through it. I told her the next morning, hey, sorry, turns out I'm straight. She would not leave me alone. She stalked me for, like, a month. It was this weird, ironic situation, suffering from unrequited love for one person while having to fight off another who was suffering from unrequited love for me. I finally told her if she didn't leave me alone I was going to get a restraining order. She spent the rest of the semester avoiding me and transferred to Smith at the end of it. I was pretty skeptical. Smith's a very competitive school, and I figured she might just be telling me that in a last-ditch effort to make me jealous, but it was true. She disappeared from campus after Christmas break."

"Why would another school make you jealous?"

"Smith is women-only and famous for the high percentage of lesbians in its student body."

"Ah. She was telling you that she was going someplace where a replacement for you in her heart would be easy to find."

"Right, and she did. When Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, she and her longtime girlfriend, whom she met at Smith, were one of the first couples married."

"Hmm. Ever think about marriage yourself?"

"I'm coming to that. The next semester I met Kenny, and I really thought he was the one. He was brilliant, brave, idealistic, articulate, funny, sexy, and completely supportive of my career. He was going into print journalism. He admired the muckrakers and Bob Woodward. He wanted to expose corruption in high places. He was kind of grandiose, but I figured it was a side effect of his ambitions. For the rest of my time on campus, I was monogamous with him. Which wasn't easy, especially after I started doing on-camera reporting and interviewing on the University's cable station. Suddenly there were fanboys coming out of the woodwork. That's when I started carrying pepper spray. I sprayed a stalker about once a month and Kenny punched at least one every semester. He suggested I switch over to print journalism, but I found on-camera work really satisfying. Senior year, I put together a video resume and applied to KMCP's postgraduate internship program, and I got in. Kenny was going to Washington, DC, for his first job. He proposed. I said yes and agreed to join him in Washington at the end of the internship. We figured I could work anywhere between Boston and Atlanta, because the shuttles are really good. And if Kenny had been faithful to me, I might have done that, even though I love this city and don't know that I could really be happy anywhere else."

"Two men dumped you for other women? This I find hard to believe."

"Kenny didn't dump me. He cheated on me. I figured it out on a visit to him about two months later. I was staying in his apartment. We were getting ready to go out. We had already gotten really casual about using the bathroom at the same time. I was putting on make-up and he was peeing and I noticed that he was flinching like he was in pain. I asked him if it hurt him to pee and he said No so quickly and so loudly that I knew he was lying."

"Gonorrhea."

"Yeah. I was lucky that was all it was. I dumped him on the spot and flew home that same night, bawling like a baby the whole way. Got cured at Mercy Hospital. When Frank offered me a permanent job, I jumped at it. By the time the holidays rolled around, I was feeling recovered enough to actually hope I might meet somebody at a party or something. And then Kenny turned up again. He turned out to be the biggest stalker of all. He turned up everywhere, begging at first and then threatening. He finally caught me walking alone from my car to a New Year's Eve party, conked me from behind, dragged me into his car, tied me up and started driving. But he didn't gag me, so as soon as I recovered from the whack on the head, I did what people here do: I started screaming for Metro Man. I still remember Kenny saying 'Come on, Rockie. Metro Man only deals with real crimi-' and then the driver's side window shattered and the car went left and up. Kenny did three years in prison and then was permanently banished from the city."

"And thus began your relationship with the man in tights."

"Well, not quite. Here's my secret: we were never a couple."

"What? But I though-"

"I know. Everybody did, but he just wasn't my type. It started after the planning session for my second interview with him. It took place in a restaurant, so the gossip column in the World implied that it was a date. I got a lot of hate mail from fans of his, but about an equal amount from other fans saying that they were glad he found someone to be happy with. And it did give me some relief from the stalker problem."

"So you've been sleeping alone ever since."

"Except... this is really hard for me to talk about. I mean, I'm so big on responsibility and preparation and there was one night when I just didn't. Do you remember who Janet Havens was?"

"CNN woman who died during the invasion of Afghanistan."

"Yeah. There was a big memorial dinner for her in New York. All the biggest names in broadcast journalism were invited, including Frank. He was going to bring his wife but at the last minute she had the flu, so he brought me. I was still pretty junior at the station and I was just dazzled to be there. After the dinner, when people were drinking and mingling, Janet's widower kind of attached himself to me. I was just drunk enough to think I had chemistry with every man there and, well, normally neediness is a turn-off, but he actually had a reason to be needy and it worked the other way. We not only didn't do the talk or get condoms or anything, we didn't even get a room. We found an empty stretch of hallway and did it against the wall. Very luckily nothing came of it. Since then it's just been me and my vibrator. Your turn."

"I'm glad to hear that you haven't been perfect. It makes my story a little less difficult to tell. A little. I want to explain the psychology of my first, er, situation, so you'll understand. It was after my second conviction. I never served any time for the first, didn't even hear the sentence, because Minion broke me out directly from the courthouse, but for my second trial they beefed up security. I expected to be sent home, but instead I was sentenced to MC Juvenile on the mons-" His voice was starting to rise to normal volume.

"Shh."

He dropped back to a hospital whisper. "...on the monstrously irrelevant grounds that I was fifteen years old. So there I was in a place whose weaknesses I had not been studying and exploiting for years, where I knew nobody, and where I felt a great need to maintain my reputation through frequent shows of bravado and ferocity. It was also the first time since our arrival on this planet that I was separated from Minion for more than a few hours. I was desperately lonely. The result was probably inevitable. I fell hard for the first young thug who approached me in the right way. His name was Emiliano and he was in for his third Grand Theft Auto conviction despite being too young to legally hold a driver's license. It delayed my escape by several days, not only because I decided I wouldn't leave until I figured out how to take him with me, but because my great brain suddenly was less interested in finding means of escape than in finding opportunities to be alone with him. But we did eventually get out. He said he wanted to visit his parents, just overnight, to reassure them that he was all right. I found myself reluctantly agreeing and went off alone to break the news to poor, worried Minion."

"Let me guess. You never saw him again."

"Got it in one, my love. At our rendezvous point I found a Dear John letter taped to the wall. This didn't stop Minion from dragging me to the Harmony Street Clinic in the middle of the night. HSC does anonymous testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and they don't even take their patients' names. Each is simply assigned a number and calls back a week after samples are taken to report the results. It was very simple to hack into their system, give myself a number, draw samples with Minion's help and insert them into the regular stream of testing services. I was perfectly clean, although the person who gave me the results said that my blood looked unusual under the microscope and advised me very strongly to get a complete physical, just in case."

"Diagnosis: extraterrestrial."

"So I set up a hematology lab, went back to the clinic, stole some samples that did have the various infections, and attempted to grow the infectious agents in Petri dishes of my blood. It was fascinating to watch the lymphocytes rise up and destroy them. I went on to try everything from the common cold to elephantiasis. None of them lived in my blood more than twenty-four hours. It seems that I have a better-than-human immune system. And these results have been borne out by experience. I have been poisoned, I have had allergic reactions and of course I have sustained physical injury, but I have never suffered from any transmissible disease."

"That's good to know."

"After that I made the dramatic adolescent decision that from then on I was going to be hard and cold. I might use others but I would never again allow myself to be used like that. As it turned out, I didn't have another affair during the year and eight months of being repeatedly sent to MC Juvie, mainly because I got better at escaping from it. After three imprisonments in a row ended with me escaping the night after I arrived, the authorities bowed to the inevitable and started sending me home. In the meantime, when I was at large, I would occasionally try to approach women. I'm sure I had a few fans even then, but no way to make contact with them, and women on the streets, even prostitutes, would flee when they saw me. Somehow it hadn't occurred to me until then that terrorizing the city a few times would cause people to be afraid of me. When I got home, back among the old familiar faces, I did some whining about my ongoing state of sexual frustration. One of the men gave me the phone number of a woman who, he said, had a similar problem of frustration because of men being afraid of her, although in her case it was because flames tended to erupt from random parts of her body at unexpected moments."

"Hot Flash."

"Yes. We were almost exactly wrong for each other, but I didn't see it. I only saw that she had a feminine figure, an established reputation as a supervillain, and a more than Platonic interest in me. I was also fascinated by her gift and she found my fascination flattering. I spent the first few weeks of our association studying her abilities and devising ways to enhance them. I also solved the problem of random flares during moments of passion by inventing a fabric that would conceal and absorb flames and having Minion make turban hats and hooded garments out of it. Under the fabric she could keep her scalp in flames more or less constantly, which relieved enough pressure that she no longer suffered unintentional eruptions. She, meanwhile, helped me to refine my style and taught me to ride a motorcycle.

"After our breakup, I designed and built the first hoverbike and began taking little jaunts above the streets every so often. I noticed that there was a certain kind of citizen who did not flee upon seeing me. In fact, they smiled and waved, and they made this sign." He held up one hand with the index and little fingers extended, the others tucked in. "Fans, of course. I considered stopping and meeting them, but I didn't want to get them arrested for abetting after the fact or something. Then the Bad Brains played their one concert here, in Waterfront Park. I had added an audio stealth mode to the hoverbike by that time, so I flew in over the fence and parked in the air just as the band was going on. A fearful hush fell over the crowd and for a moment I was worried that I might panic someone into canceling the concert, just by showing up. Then the lead guitarist made the sign, I made it back, a number of people in the audience did the same, and the concert went on. Excellent show, by the way. At the end of it, a little knot of concert goers gathered under me, calling for me to come down, so I did."

"You deliberately landed in a crowd of fans?"

"It was my first encounter with them. I didn't know what to expect. Once it was clear that I was in danger of being dragged from my machine and stripped, I rose again, only to discover that I had a passenger. That first hoverbike didn't have room for one on the seat, so she was standing behind me and hanging on around my ribs. At about a dozen feet of elevation, she groped my crotch and I almost ran us into a building, but I did manage to regain control long enough to get us parked on a suitable roof. After that, I thought it would be a matter of leaning back against the handlebars and succumbing to the inevitable, but before any clothes came off, I suddenly heard Wayne's voice coming out of the sky above us."

"Wayne? Why? And how?"

"Apparently someone who saw us lift off jumped to the conclusion that an abduction was happening and called for Metro Mahn. He demanded to know whether the young lady was old enough to be doing this. I responded with a demand that he mind his own business, while she shouted up to him with equal ire that the age of consent was sixteen and she was seventeen."

"The same age as you?"

"And the same age as that self-appointed chaperon in the sky. He actually had her get out her ID and hold it up while he read it. Then, to my utter surprise, he offered us the use of his family's penthouse in town, saying he would have the servants make sure there were condoms in the bedside table and then take the night off. He was as good as his word, and we had a wonderful night. I delivered her back to her family home at four-thirty in the morning. Every light in the house was on, so I knew they were waiting up. I had been very impressed at the way she argued back to Metro Mahn, so I decided to listen in, looking forward to hearing her defend her choice of me to her parents. Instead, she acquiesced by silence as they declared her grounded for the rest of the summer and thanked their god that she was going all the way to Antioch in the fall, because surely I couldn't follow her that far. I went home with the sinking realization that I would probably never see her again, which surprised me because until then I hadn't realized that I wanted to see her again."

"Did you see her again?"

"No, but the long talk I had with Minion after that night clarified things for me a great deal. I realized that I didn't want brief encounters, no matter how much they might enhance my villainous reputation. I wanted, we both wanted, someone who would join us in our life of villainy."

"You wanted a relationship."

"Exactly. So although I began doing more or less the same thing I would have otherwise, which is to say developing the skill of cutting one fangirl out of the herd, I was doing it with a different intention that if I had been merely looking for a series of quick rolls in the proverbial hay. I was... recruiting. This resulted in a great deal fewer sexual encounters, but I felt it was worth it to find the right person. And with Starlight I thought I'd found her."

"Starlight started out as a fan?"

"Mm-hmm. I saw from the beginning that she had great potential. Unlike the common run of fangirls, she was something of an athlete, with steady nerves and a decent amount of self-discipline. She was also an orphan, like us, and rather socially isolated. She could just disappear into a new identity and no one would go looking for her. We devised a program of training in the arts of villainy, and she proved an excellent pupil. About three months into the program, she had a birthday. I was the present she wanted and I was only too happy to comply. It was at that point that a problem developed. In her imagination she had been having an affair with me for more than a year and she couldn't seem to remember that the real me liked different things than the imaginary me. I began to realize that she was not very thoughtful about other people's feelings, generally, and I resolved that when she departed for her first caper, which involved going to California, tracking down her parents' murderer and extracting revahnge, I would encourage her to settle there rather than coming back to Metrocity. The supervillains' convention was on one of the islands off the California coast that year, at about the time she expected to be done with her caper. I arranged a ticket for her as my protégé and we met there. She brought her prisoner along on a boat and I was happy to dehydrate him for her and seal the cube. She had already developed the kind of intense but ambivalent relationship with someone on the other side that so many supers are prone to, in her case with a policeman, and she was settling into San Diego very nicely. Then I had to spend the rest of the convention comforting Minion. He'd become very attached to her and he was heartbroken to find out that she was going to be staying out there. I ended up promising him that I would never again become involved with anyone who wasn't as committed to Metrocity as we were. And that, my love, is my whole sexual biography. Since Starlight there has been no one else."

"Intense but ambivalent. Sounds like us."

"Still? I got over the last of my ambivalence about you when I saw you at Romanov's."

"Still. I do feel something ... a lot... for you, but in my head there's still this picture of the guy I should be with."

"A human guy."

"More than that. One... who can make peace in my family."

"I didn't know your family was at war."

"Kind of a cold war. The active hostilities ended when I was in high school. Now there are just people I care about not speaking to each other."

"Do they all live in Metrocity?"

"Don't you even think about using your power to force them to get back on speaking terms. It doesn't work that way."

"Then were you hoping to find and marry a skilled psychologist who knows how it does work?"

"Not exactly. More like... every time I accomplish something, there's a cease-fire, like when I was valedictorian, or when I got named Best New Voice in Broadcast Journalism, my first year at KMCP. I keep thinking that if I were only successful enough, I could bring about a permanent cease-fire. Maybe even reconciliation."

"Ah. I see it now. Wayne Scott was to be your great accomplishment in the romantic realm."

She nodded. "That was why I let the fiction go on for so long, even though we didn't have any chemistry. I guess I was thinking that either a spark would strike at some point or we would end up with a kind of marriage of convenience. I was sure that would do it."

"What if you were queen? Would that be success enough?"

She blinked a moment before she replied. "Did you just propose?"

"My goal is your happiness. If that can be brought about through legal marriage, then yes. Let's set a date. If some other arrangement would better suit your purposes, then tell me and I'll make it happen."

Roxanne just lay there, astonished. _He cares so much and he's so powerful and so clueless about human society. I don't dare let him near my problems... but who else has ever been ready to back me unconditionally like this_? She felt her eyes getting wet.

"Roxanne, are you crying? I... I didn't say anything wrong, did I?"

"You moved me." She sniffled. "Get me a tissue?"

He got one from the dispenser on the wall, started to offer it to her, realized she couldn't take it, dried her eyes himself and then held it under her nose so she could blow. She felt disgusting, but the tenderness in his eyes never wavered.

"I do want to be with you," she said. "Even if it doesn't solve all my problems. I just need to think over what's the best way to arrange things."

"That is the thing I wanted most in the world to hear," he whispered, and kissed her. For quite a while.


	11. Chapter 11

Over the next three weeks, Metro City's justice system became transparent, almost literally. Cameras were installed by brainbots in courtrooms, waiting rooms, interrogation rooms and even the garages where squad cars and other official vehicles were parked. Those cameras were linked to giant screens, also brainbot-installed, on the outsides of the same buildings. The ones on police stations showed video only, but those on the courthouse also featured sound. The people who worked in them were furious, but none of them interfered with the equipment.

The Death Ray went live for good; its beam was now the dominant feature of the city's skyline.

A swarm of brainbots moved through the city, taking soil samples from private as well as public land. Nobody dared complain.

Roxanne enjoyed nightly visits from the Evil Overlord. The brace came off his arm. The spot of pink on his face became steadily smaller and one night it was just gone.

He wanted to know about her university experience. It was the one thing about life on the good side of the line that he admitted to envying: being part of a community of scholars. She was almost sorry to disappoint him, but she was honest about campus life, the frat houses and football and the free flow of recreational drugs, the premeds who would sabotage each other's lab experiments for a marginal advantage on the grading curve, the classes in which famous scholars lectured but the actual teaching was done by underpaid grad students, the senior faculty members who did no research because their time was all taken up with grantsmanship and administration. "But if you can get past all that," she said, "then you can find real intellectuals doing the work they love." He wanted to hear about that, the experiments, the graduate seminars, the play of ideas, the resources in some of the libraries that might not be accessible online for another fifty years because the information was sought by so few people.

He would sigh and go away thoughtful. Once he understood that scholarly institutions run on money, like other human institutions, he began to plan for one to be founded in Metro City under his personal patronage. She encouraged the idea. It sounded good, in both senses of the word. He told her about the results of the soil sampling, which revealed contamination typical of old industrial cities, and his plan to use organisms that would either break down the pollutants or concentrate them so they could be extracted. "Sunflowers accumulate lead, so I'll plant the whole city with them for a season and then have robo-sheep harvest them and chew them to a pulp. The pulp will go into a mee-thane generator to extract the carbon, which can feed into the city's natural gas pipelines. The sludge from the generators will get processed by a series of microbial inocculations. I haven't worked out all the details yet, but the result should be blocks of lead pure enough for to use in things like radiation shielding. We'll turn a pollution problem into a resource."

"Sounds great, but what about the people who don't want brainbots digging up their lawns and planting sunflowers?"

"Oh, did I say this was going to be optional? No, this is man-date-ory. Where the Evil Overlord commands sunflowers, there will be sunflowers!" She tried to persuade him to stage the process over several years so it would be less disruptive, but he was impatient, plus he liked the idea of the dramatic view of the city from the air with all the sunflowers blooming. She gave that one up as a lost cause.

Not too long after that, one of the interns at KMCP called her, requesting her input on a little dispute that had happened in the newsroom. It was common knowledge that the attitude of the city toward its Overlord was changing. Megaheads were no longer harassed on the street and in the schools. Ordinary citizens were heard to make positive comments about some of the changes he'd made. Now the nerve-blocking technology was making Metro City General Hospital into a center of attention in the international medical community. One of the interns had come up with the idea of doing spot interviews with random citizens, asking whether they though Megamind was still evil or whether he had mellowed in office. Had the monster been tamed? Frank had squashed the idea flat, saying it might get the Overlord thinking that he wasn't being evil enough, which might lead to him doing something about that. The intern felt sure that was wrong and wanted Roxanne's backing on it, since she had more contact with the blue guy than anyone else. But Roxanne, thinking of the mandatory sunflowers, backed Frank. Better to let the Overlord go on thinking of himself as evil, while quietly enjoying his increasing distance from the actual practice.

During the day, she slept a lot, kept up with friends and family by phone, followed the news and investigated Olivetti. The Lugano Institute for Mineral Sciences, though its name suggested an academic establishment, was actually a Swiss mining company, and Pietro Olivetti was one of its most prized employees. He specialized in locating certain rare minerals with high economic value. He might be sent anywhere in the world, and he always travelled with all his equipment in a single very large crate which did not go through regular airport security. Even more unusual was the way he worked. Prospecting geologists almost always work in teams, but Olivetti insisted on working alone. A helicopter would set him and his crate down in some remote area with camping gear and supplies and leave him there. His equipment included a satellite phone connection through which he would send back data as he got it, and when he'd covered all the area he could reach from his base, he'd be helicoptered to the next base site. He had made his employer billions and was thus highly valued, but an insider told her, strictly off the record, that he refused to take on trainees, which was an ongoing source of friction between him and the company, especially as he was already past the official retirement age. To keep working, he had actually given up his Swiss and Lugano citizenship and taken U.S. and Reno citizenship. (The Lugano Institute was a subsidiary of a Reno-based company called SAMCORP, for Smelting and Mining Corporation.) He had been heard to say that he wanted to die while working, preferrably in some remote location.

Finally, using her connections in the world of international charity, she reached two aid workers who were familiar with areas where Olivetti had worked, one in Ecuador, one in Pakistan. She hired them to go into the areas with photos of the geologist and ask the locals whether they had seen him and what they had heard about him. Both the native villagers of the Andes and the Indo-European villagers of the western Himalayas reported that he was seen riding or leading a creature they described as a very odd horse, with enormous hindquarters, arms growing out of its chest and a short pointed muzzle like a wild dog.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place when she told Megamind she had his data and Minion sent her an email he said he had received as a voice recording in his and Megamind's native language, of which they had believed themselves the last surviving speakers. He had translated it into English and converted it to text, adding explanatory notes in brackets. **Please forgive any errors I make in your language, which I have not used in many years.**, it read. **I am Siligili-Reii of the Colna [the intelligent species native to the planet Col]. Thirty-six years ago, I was on Toklina [an uninhabited planet the Colna had claimed] prospecting. I began to run out of certain supplies and attempted to return to Colna space. All went well until I tried to come out of hyperspace. At that moment, the black hole detector malfunctioned and flung me out of the galactic plane. [The black hole detector is supposed to detect the presence of a black hole at the ship's destination and send the ship back to its starting point.] From there, Earth was the nearest planet with an industrial civilization where I might hope to replenish my supplies. Shortly after I landed here, in an area of low population, I made contact with a native, Pietro Olivetti, and we were able to develop a way of communicating. He agreed to get me the supplies I needed for my body, and has done so ever since, in return for my help in his prospecting work. This much of our association has been mutually beneficial. However, it is clear to me that I am Pietro Olivetti's prisoner. He has refused to get me what I need to refuel my ship. By now it has probably deteriorated past the point of repair. He has also refused to make arrangements that would allow me to get what I need without his help. He has also subjected me to many indignities such as being shipped in a crate and carrying him on my back. I believe he intends that when he dies I will be abandoned in some area of mountainous wilderness, so that no other humans will ever know that his accomplishments were mostly achieved with my help. I therefore appeal to you, who have brought about an increase in acceptance among humans of those who do not resemble them, for any help you can offer to get me free of this human and to bring me to your city where I can enjoy some degree of self-determination during my last years of life. I will be using his satellite telephone to send this. It is with him most of the time and, if it is in an unpopulated area, I will also be with him.**

Roxanne's eyes bulged. _Slavery. This is actual slavery._ She immediately sent Minion all the information she had collected, with a query about what they intended to do now. The reply she got was "Kidnap her." It took Roxanne a moment to figure out that "her" meant Siligili-Reii. _Okay, guys. If you want to call a rescue a kidnapping so you can still feel evil about it, go right ahead._

That night, Megamind arrived in her hospital room just half an hour after lights out. He greeted her with a long, warm kiss, as usual.

"You're early," she said as soon as she could breathe.

"And I'm not staying long. I'm going to do the kidnapping immediately." She could hear the excitement in his voice. "It will take me tonight and tomorrow to get there and find them. I'll observe until the moment is opportune, then descend, take her aboard, smash Mr. Olivetti's electronics so he can't tattle on us, and come straight back."

"Aboard what? And where's there?"

"Aboard the Doom Cruiser. You've only seen it in its dirigible form, but it can retract the balloon and become a jet that will reach Ecuador in about fifteen hours. They're in the Andes, in the middle of nowhere, and I intend to leave Olivetti there. It will probably take him days to get to someplace where he can make contact with the rest of the world, and by then we'll have released the video. The world will hear her side of the story first. That's advantageous, isn't it?"

"Yeah, and in case you don't talk to me before you film, use the word enslaved. Olivetti enslaved her. That will get a gut-level reaction in her favor from the public."

"My brilliant publicist." He kissed her again. "Oh, and Minion will be projecting a hologram of me in City Hall for an hour or two, to create the illusion that I'm still here. This mission is strictly secret."

"My lips are sealed."

"Only in the verbal sense, I hope." He gave her a third kiss, employing his tongue, and found that to him, her lips were not sealed at all. Then he said "Rest well, my love," and rose.

"Good hunting," she whispered, and he smiled over his shoulder as he left.

The next evening, just after dinner, she got an email from him, uncharacteristically brief, reporting success. There were also pictures of Siligili-Reii attached. Looking at them, Roxanne began to see where there might be a little PR problem. Her chestnut-brown color, four legs and nearly triangular head might have looked kind of like a horse to mountain villagers who saw horses every day and didn't watch nature shows, but to anyone familiar with the ecosystem of Michigan, the six limbs, skinny upper body with bulbous lower-rear torso and what looked like compound eyes on the two upper corners of the head would be more likely to bring to mind a giant insect.

Roxanne had noticed that all three of Metro City's famous alien residents were, each in their own way, beautiful. Metro Man's robust hypermasculinity didn't appeal to her, but she knew it did to many, and she had been moved by his grace in the air. Megamind delighted her with his gymnast's figure and agility, his lovely coloring, expressive face and those eyes, and Minion was so adorable that she sometimes wondered whether he was genetically engineered for maximum cuteness. But Siligili-Reii was just scary and the fact that she was taller than Megamind by a good foot and a half only added to her scariness. If the Evil Overlord wanted an enforcer with real intimidation power, he couldn't ask for a more effective one, but if she wanted to work and shop and go to shows and generally participate in the life of the city, something was going to have to be done to soften her image.

Roxanne suggested that Siligili-Reii wear clothing. It turned out that the six-limbed alien had been wearing a many-pocketed equipment vest, like a fisherman's vest, when she came aboard, but a quick scan had revealed that it had a tracking device sewn into it, broadcasting her location, so she'd taken it off and let Megamind dehydrate it. Roxanne had something more feminine in mind, something that covered Siligili-Reii's lower torso in deference to North American notions of modesty. Minion started putting forward ideas immediately.

Siligili-Reii's response, relayed by Megamind, was "I begin to remember why I became a prospector." It turned out that she wasn't all that interested in the life of the city. She wanted to spend her days outdoors, examining rocks, as she had all her adult life. Her body had been modified for prospecting. Some of the artificial eyes clustered around her natural eyes had various kinds of polarizing and/or magnifying lenses, enabling her to see crystalline structures. There were detectors embedded in the palms of her hands and bottoms of her forefeet, and some of the sweat glands around the detectors had been modified to produce a mild acid, which dissolved certain minerals enough that the detectors could identify them. She could stand barefoot on a stone surface for thirty seconds, or hold a rock in her hand, and tell what it was made of. She was a walking geology lab, and she wanted to continue doing what she was good at. She just wanted to do it on her own, not on some human's leash.

The truth was that Siligili-Reii didn't even want to do it on Earth. If Megamind could get hold of her spacecraft and repair it, she wanted to visit one of the Colna-claimed planets outside the cluster to find out whether there were any other Colna survivors. Megamind was okay with that. He was curious about the spacecraft, anyway, and getting hold of it promised a challenge. While she waited for him to, first, find it and, second, repair it, she could earn her keep by having a look at the worked-out iron and copper mines within Metro City's jurisdiction. None of them had produced ore in decades, but Siligili-Reii wasn't about iron and copper. She was specialized to detect the same rare minerals that Olivetti had built his career on. No coincidence there; his career probably consisted mostly of passing her work off as his own.

Megamind still wanted her to be presented to the city in a video, just so the public would know her and know that she was there with the permission of the Overlord. Roxanne outlined a script for a video, sent it off and went to sleep.

The next night, her blue man was back. He woke her with a kiss, but when he broke it off, she could see that his warmth was cut with sorrow, like a shadow of the mood she'd found him in on the night he blew up the museum.

"Does winning always make you sad?" she asked.

"Only when someone dies, or seems to," he replied.

"You had to kill Olivetti?"

"Siligili-Reii did it, and she didn't have to. I'd already sprayed him. We could have left him there or brought him along for questioning, but she just grabbed him by the throat and wouldn't let go. It was..." He paused, gulped and continued, "...gross."

"She must really hate him." He nodded.

"She admitted to me that she'd been fantasizing for years about doing him in. Roxanne, do you..." He looked at her with the saddest eyes in the world. "...find it harder to respect me now that you know this?"

"That you weren't in perfect control of the situation? Hey, sometimes things get out of control. It happens."

"No. I meant that I'm, er, squeamish about killing."

"I'm a good person, remember? I think it's good that you don't kill people easily, or see them killed. Killing is serious. You should never be casual about it."

"Are you saying I should stay squeamish?"

"Well, it might not be the most practical quality for an Evil Overlord, but I like you better this way. And you've learned now that, in situations like this, dehydrating is better than spraying."

"Hmm. Yes. If I'd known she was going to react this way, I could have dehydrated him immediately and then given her the satisfaction of flinging him overboard from a great height and letting her find out later that he would have landed safely."

"But you completed the mission. You got her here. She's free. She should thank you."

"I don't know that she's going to be thanking me any time soon. I had to break the news to her about the cluster. Do you remember her saying, in her email, that the black hole detector on her ship malfunctioned?"

"Yeah."

"It didn't malfunction. The cluster was destroyed while she was in hyperdrive. Her equipment detected a black hole at her destination, tried to return her to her point of origin, detected a black hole there, and sent her to a region where there were no stars, so there couldn't be any black holes. Through all the years of her captivity, she thought her homeworld still existed, her people and her family, until yesterday, when I informed her that, at the time of her landing on Earth, it was already gone." His voice faded to a barely audible whisper. "She was wondering whether she was a grandmother and I had to tell her that everyone she remembered was dead." He hung his blue head.

"And... is this bringing back bad memories for you?"

"Yes, but it's more than that. She told me twice how humanlike my movements and gestures are. When she came aboard, she was expecting the greeting customary among my people, but I didn't offer it because I don't know it. If she were to find survivors of my people as well as hers, and they were to come here, what would they think of me? I'm not really one of them, but I'm not human, either. What am I? Siligili-Reii at least knows what she is."

"We already know what you are. You're mine, and you're the Evil Overlord of Metro City. At least... Wait. If there were survivors of your people, and they came here, and they invited you and Minion to join them and leave Earth and never come back, would you do it, and just forget about me and the city?"

He sat bolt upright, his eyes wide with surprise. Then he turned to her. "Never, Roxanne. Never in a million years."

"Then it doesn't matter what some hypothetical distant relatives of yours think, does it?"

He smiled at her tenderly. "You always know what to say."

###

Two days later, the clamshells and the bandages and the nerve blocks were taken off Roxanne's hands. They were weak and the skin was hypersensitive, but they had full range of motion, not the permanent claw shape that palm and fingerpad burns sometimes heal into. The scars weren't raised; make-up could hide them completely, althought she was warned not to use it for at least two months because it was likely to irritate the healing skin. She wiggled her fingers with wonder and then, very gently and cautiously shook the gloved hands of her medical team, laughing at the sensation.

Later that day, while the video introducing Siligili-Reii to the city was broadcast, they did the same for the rest of her burns. She and her mother sat through a lesson about the TLC the injuries would need at home and received a box of bandages and aloe vera gel. Then she put on a loose cotton dress bought specially to be gentle on the injuries and sat (at the orderly's insistence) in a wheelchair. He wheeled her out to her mother's car. She slept that night, and many nights afterward, in the bedroom that had been hers when she was a girl, surrounded by aloe vera plants sent as get-well gifts. She watched the video of Siligili-Reii and reports of public reaction to it. She heard her temporary replacement mention that Hal had been released from the hospital the same day.

###

Minion set up a page on the website and a mailbox for Siligili-Reii. The evening after the video went out, he showed her how to use the email, then left her feeding congratulations from total strangers into a translator program and went downstairs to the former mayor's office to check in with Megamind. The Evil Overlord had a map of downtown spread out on the desk, but he wasn't looking at it. Instead, he was gazing off into the middle distance with a smile on his face, and when his henchfish came in, what he wanted to talk about was the wonderfulness of Roxanne Ritchi. He was only two minutes into this topic when Siligili-Reii galloped in, shouting (in the language common only to the three of them in all the city) "[I'll never go back! Don't let him take me back!]" She ran behind Megamind, then crouched down behind the big desk, turning to face the door, where a large humanoid figure, barely visible in the shadows of the hallway, was approaching. Megamind put his hand on the grip of the de-gun.

After a long tense moment, the bearded figure of Wayne Scott emerged into the light.

"Well, well," said the blue man coldly, in English, as he released the gun. "Back from the dead. To what do we owe the honor?"

"Roxie told you, huh?"

"She told me nothing. I told her where to find you. I'd had brainbots out looking for you ever since I figured out that that skeleton you threw into the fake observatory wasn't even real bone. Now what are you doing here, scaring our newest citizen?"

"I... I wanted her help. Please. Tell her not to be afraid of me."

"What kind of help could she offer you?"

"Look, we all came here when we were kids. Babies. She came here as an adult. She'd been out there for years. I wanted to ask her if she'd seen anybody who looked like me, maybe if she knew what planet my people came from or what we were called."

Minion spoke. "You're a Glau, Wayne. I coulda told you that years ago."

"Then why didn't you!?"

"You never asked. You acted like you never wanted to know anything I could tell you."

The alien who had once been Metro Man lowered his eyes for a moment, then looked at them again.

"Can we let that go for now? Please. I just really want to know. Please."

Megamind answered him.

"Why should any of us answer your questions?"

"You and Minion were as marooned as I was, but you at least had your language and some memories. I never even had that."

"You are mistaking my meaning. I'm not asking why you should want our help. I'm asking what you are prepared to offer in return."

"What do you want?"

"Let's start with a couple of very large apologies, one to Minion, one to me."

"For what?"

Megamind rolled his eyes, while Minion merely looked at the ceiling, but both had the same expression of exasperated disbelief. "The answer to that is going to take a while," said the Evil Overlord. "Make yourself comfortable." While Minion explained things to Siligili-Reii, Wayne pulled a bench in out of the rotunda and sat down. He was there quite a while. Megamind's memory was sharp and detailed and it went back a long way. When his recitation of grievances was done, Minion added a few of his own, incidents that happened when Megamind hadn't been there or had been distracted. The longer it went on, the more Wayne lowered his head. By the time Minion said "That's it," his face was parallel with the floor.

Without removing his elbows from his thighs, he looked up with a rueful expression. "I was kind of a shit, wasn't I?"

"You were a total shit," the fish answered.

"Well... I admit it. I'm sorry. I never respected either of you for who you were. Never even tried to find out. Forgive me."

Megamind smirked, basking in it, every inch the Evil Overlord.

"Shall we forgive him, Minion?"

"I'm just blown away, sir. I never thought we'd hear this from him. So, yeah, I say we do."

"Done! You're forgiven. Now what have you got to offer Siligili-Reii?"

"Maybe if she could tell me what she's afraid of..." He sat up as he spoke.

"She is afraid of being forced to return to the life Pietro Olivetti imposed on her. He is dead, but there is a whole institute out there, and its parent corporation, that derived plenty of profit from that life and thus has plenty of motive for wanting her dragged back to it. On two occasions, she stole supplies and attempted to flee. Each time, she was thwarted by a superhero. These are the only personal encounters with superheroes she has had during her time on this planet. And she knows you for the most powerful superhero on Earth. Why wouldn't she fear you?"

Wayne thought for a moment. "All I can offer her is a promise, but you know it's one I can keep. As long as she's in Metro City, nobody is going to coerce her into anything. She can go where she wants and do what she chooses. Teach her to say my name. No. Let her teach me what I would be called in the language of my people. Then, when she's in trouble, she can call that out and I'll hear it, wherever in the city she is, and I'll make sure she stays free."

"Coming out of your self-imposed retirement?"

"Only for her. As far as the rest of the city is concerned, I'm still dead."

Megamind and Minion turned to Siligili-Reii and the three spoke in their own language for a few moments. Then the six-limbed alien rose and went to Wayne, who stood as she approached. They were the same height.

"Chiyeel Glau," she said.

Megamind interpreted. "That means Glau adult male. You, in other words. That's what she'll call out when she needs your help."

"I'll be listening for it."

Siligili-Reii said something else. "She says she'll send you an email every night," Minion translated. "When she's sent you everything she knows she remembers about the Glau, then you can send her questions and see if they stimulate her to remember more."

"Thank you," said Wayne, and put out his hand to shake. Siligili-Reii put her dark hand in his pale one and they shook.

Then she said something else. Minion interpreted again. "She says she thinks you're the loneliest one of us all. She'll try to help you be less lonely."

Wayne's eyes suddenly showed pain. His jaw dropped. For a moment, he looked to be on the verge of tears. Then he turned and, with superspeed, he was gone.

"[Just like a Glau]," said Siligili-Reii.


	12. Chapter 12

Three nights later. Friday. Therese Lepine, known to the public as Ferocity, wasn't particularly into the high goth look, but it gave her what she needed: the long dress and gloves that kept her from being recognized, and dark colors that would allow her to hide in the shadows. Besides, she'd learned that there was always a little group of Megaheads hanging around outside City Hall, just beyond the brainbot-patrolled perimeter, hoping for glimpses of the Evil Overlord, and some of them were goths, so she didn't look out of place there. She'd been hanging around with them, learning the frequency of the patrols, noticing the entrances, looking through the windows to get a sense of the building's layout, and observing the movements of the enemy she and her comrades on this mission would soon fight: the Evil Overlord, his henchman, and the murderer. That was the purpose of the mission: to bring the murderer to justice. She reminded herself of that every time she started to have doubts about the mission or wondered what it would be like to live in a city where she wouldn't need to disguise herself, or become the city's defender, just to be able to live a normal life.

She watched the three aliens eat dinner in the second floor dining room, then separate, the blue man and the gorilla cyborg to the office to watch a talk show, the six-limbed one to a computer workstation at the other end of the building. Pulling out her phone, she called in the rest of her team, describing what she saw. When she heard the helicopter, she shed her dress, pulled out the industrial dust mask tucked flat into a hidden pocket, and put it around her neck. Her tail lashed with pleasure at being free of the skirt. The Megaheads - there were five of them at the moment, all female - were staring. She didn't understand them at all, but they'd been nice to her, and warning them would be the right thing to do.

"If I were you," she said as she tossed away the gloves and flexed her claws, "I'd get out of here." She pulled the mask up as a fine rain of dust began to fall.

"Megamind!" screamed one of them. "Look out! It's an attack!" The others joined in, screaming at the figures visible in the window. After that initial shout came an inhale and then a coughing fit as they felt the falling dust in their lungs. But it was enough. The pair inside looked out at them as a brainbot fell out of the air, its light flickering. Megamind drew.

###

Roxanne's family took her to dinner at the Top of the City, Metro Tower's revolving restaurant. After the hospital food, it was just amazing. As usual for meals, the specialized glove-bandages had been taken off so she could eat. Her mother had to cut up her steak, but she could use a fork, holding her first two fingers bent and clasping the handle in between them. She picked up her wine glass the same way, palm down, so that the bowl rested on the back of her hand. She was very careful with the wine; after all these weeks of no alcohol at all, she knew every sip would count for three. She was seated so that she looked past her little niece in the high chair directly out the window at the city. They were in the middle of dessert when the revolving floor brought them around so that she was looking directly down High Street, and she realized that she was seeing something a little different from what she'd seen the last time this particular view came around. In addition to the red and white and yellow lights of the cars moving up and down the street, there were blue lights that all seemed to be going one way.

"Brainbots," she said, and everyone at the table followed her gaze.

"Headed for City Hall," added her stepfather.

"Help me walk all the way around," she said, rising. "I want to make sure."

The whole family walked around the restaurant, which took up an entire floor of the tower, looking down at the streets, confirming that brainbots from all over the city were converging on the Overlord's residence. When they got back to their own table, she called Hal.

"Hey, Roxie! I'm down here checking out the new cameras. You should see what these things can do!"

"I hope you're ready to do it for real." She told him what she'd just seen. He promised to pick her up at the Tower. "And bring a headset," she added. "I can't grip the microphone."

###

"This is Roxanne Ritchi reporting from City Hall, where a pitched battle is going on between Megamind and several unknown attackers." She wore the headset, speaking into its microphone. The glove-bandages were back on her hands, which she kept at her sides. Behind her, through the big windows, the interior of the building appeared to be a solid mass of brainbots. The mass would ripple and for a moment there would be a flash of some other combatant, chestnut brown skin or fake gorilla fur or the fabric of a super's costume. "The fighting seems to be contained inside for now, but citizens are advised to avoid the area."

As if just to prove her wrong, the battle suddenly burst through the windows with a rattle of submachine gun fire. Five heroes in jet packs, all male, with pale faces and short dark hair, flew out, carrying something large in a net, something that was chestnut brown and struggled. Brainbots sped after them, but not fast enough; the blue lights fell behind rapidly. "The fighting is now moving northwest along the plaza. Five attackers are visible. They've captured Megamind's newest associate, Siligili-Reii. The brainbots chasing them are separating, leaving a clear line of sight between the attackers and the window, so we can expect...Yes. Megamind is firing." One of the secondary lenses on Hal's fancy new camera caught the Evil Overlord in dramatic silhouette, standing on the windowsill, raising the de-gun and firing, even as the main lens continued to follow the attackers. One of the five heroes suddenly became a little blue cube, falling out of his jet pack. "One attacker has been dehydrated. The rest are slowing down. The brainbots are catching up." In the distance, other camera people were visible, not from other stations, but freelancers hoping to sell the film later. Another attacker fell, dehydrated. The remaining three suddenly dropped the net. It was caught and set down gently by brainbots as two of the attackers swooped down to pick up the glowing blue cubes that were their comrades, while the third produced a submachine gun and began firing around them, taking out any brainbots that approached. The bots that had caught Siligili-Reii were spreading out the net, freeing her. Megamind fired again but missed.

Suddenly a hoverbike came out of the sky and knocked the gunner directly into Siligili-Reii. "That will be Minion in the hoverbike. Siligili-Reii is wrestling for the gun." The six-limbed alien stood on her hind legs and kicked at the gunner with her forelegs while her arms held onto the weapon. Bullets sprayed in all directions. Hal's face was flinched up in terror, but he kept filming. Suddenly Megamind doubled over, holding his midsection, then fell back into the building. Roxanne had never in her life had such a struggle to keep her tone level as she reported "The Evil Overlord is down." The cubes were flung into the reflecting pool. Rehydrated, the two attackers rose immediately and struggled toward their fallen jet packs through clouds of brainbots. "The number of attackers is back up to five and it looks like they'll all be airborne again soon. Minion is swinging around for another approach." Three more brainbots, carrying Megamind, emerged from the broken window and flew off. He looked horribly limp, and seemed to have a head wound.

For a moment the core of the battle was concealed under a mass of the flying blue-lit domes. Then it burst upward, Siligili-Reii still struggling with the gunner while the other four attackers held the net under both of them and lifted. "It looks like the five jet packs have got the brainbots beat for speed, and Minion has deflected his approach, probably to avoid hitting Siligili-Reii. Now he's going for a grapple." One extensible arm reached for the nearest jet pack. The wearer turned as the mechanical grip connected and, with one kick, broke the cable connecting the hand with the rest of the gorilla suit. "That's a superstrength move. There's no way a human could kick like that. The attackers are headed northwest again, with their captive. Minion is keeping up, but it's a good question what he can do at this point." News vans from the other stations were arriving, passing Channel Eight's, trying to get under the action for closer filming. Hal stayed in place, following the action with the zoom feature on his camera.

Suddenly, something came out of the sky and knocked one of the attackers to the pavement. It was white and gleamed in a way that was familiar, yet totally out of place in the summer night. It was a snowball the size of a human head. Roxanne blinked at it a moment to make sure that was what she was seeing. Another one knocked another attacker down. Both lay still, apparently unconscious. "Counterattack from overhead, of snowballs." As before, when the number of attackers was down to three, they dropped the net and the brainbots moved in to break Siligili-Reii's fall. The gunner abandoned his weapon, which hadn't been heard from in a while. He attempted to fly off without it, but she pulled him down by his right leg and, swinging the machine gun by its muzzle, hit him on the head so hard that the gun bent. He went down at the same time that Minion dramatically rode down both the remaining attackers in a single power dive. The hoverbike stalled, swung back toward City Hall, and a mechanical foot extended from it and snatched up the de-gun from where it lay on the lawn. The fallen attackers were getting up, groggy, as brainbots mobbed them, pulling off their jet packs. Minion dehydrated all five, then flew off in the same direction that his boss had been carried. Roxanne finished up her report as, in the background, Siligili-Reii collected the little blue cubes and the brainbots gathered up debris.

"And that has got to be the fucking scoop of the year," Hal gloated. They were both flying high on adrenaline. "Hey, Roxie, you wanna -" He broke off his invitation as the crews from the other stations came up to congratulate the two of them and welcome them back. She made an effort to be appropriately gracious, but a big chunk of her mind was on the Evil Overlord, whether he was alive, whether he was in danger, whether she'd ever see him again.

And then Drew Mariani, the reporter for Channel Five, got the next scoop. Siligili-Reii didn't speak English, but she spoke Italian, as did Mariani. As the big alien was returning to City Hall with her handful of cubes, he broke away from the little group of news personnel, ran up to her and asked for an interview. She agreed and all the cameras gathered around her. By the rules of broadcast journalism, only Channel Five could broadcast it live, but the others were allowed to film it for use in their regularly scheduled news shows, with Drew cropped out of the picture. On camera, with Mariani interpreting, Siligili-Reii identified two of her attackers. She had met them before. One was Dinamo, defender-in-training of Lugano. The other was an American known as Cowboy Joe, a member of the Desert States Justice Association. She speculated that they'd come to return her to her servitude, because that was what they had done when she'd met them before, on previous attempts to escape from Olivetti. While she described the initial attack on City Hall (by a team of twelve) and the first part of the battle, the part that took place inside, Roxanne had her phone out and was quietly texting Minion. **How badly is he hurt? Can I see him? Call me.**

While Hal drove them back to the station, Roxanne called her mother and had her meet them with Roxanne's laptop, which had all the material on Olivetti. Inside the office, while Hal was stretching out the congratulations, going into brag mode as he always did, Roxanne was in Frank's office, laying out the material for him and Peggy, preparing a report on the economic niche Siligili-Reii had occupied and the reasons why SAMCORP would take the very expensive step of borrowing twelve city and regional heroes to get her back. During that little conference, Minion called.

"He's stable," said the fish. "Where are you?" The Invisible Car became visible in front of the station twenty minutes later. Minion locked her into the comfortable padded handcuffs which now stuck out of the back passenger seat next to the safety belt anchors. He had already replaced his lost metal hand.

"You wouldn't happen to have a clean bag to go with these, would you?" she asked.

"Even better. New thing the boss invented while you were in the hospital. He calls it an electronic blindfold. I'll turn it on when we get moving." As the car pulled into traffic, he flipped a switch and suddenly all she could see was the _Starry Night_ on a black background, with a continuous wire service news feed scrolling just under it. "It's a personal hologram."

"It's very thoughtful of him," she replied. She wondered whether the wire service had picked up the events she had just reported, but all she saw was a story about a soccer riot in England. She decided to ignore it.

"How bad is he?" she asked.

"Not as bad as he looked. The head wound was only a scrape. You know how they bleed, whether they're serious or not. And the impact-resistant fabric kept the bullets from penetrating and spread the compression, so instead of being shot four times, his injuries are more like what he would have if he'd been punched really hard four times. One of 'em cracked a rib and there's some internal organ damage, but I've seen him recover from worse."

"Thank God."

"It gets better. He recovers faster than a human. If you took four socks to the gut like that, so deep they hit kidney, you'd probably take a couple of months to recover, but he'll be up and around in three weeks or so. In fact, I'll probably have to start holding him down at two weeks, so he'll finish recovering."

Her sense of relief came out as a joke. "Can I watch? Can I take pictures?"

"I didn't mean it literally, Ms. Ritchi. Well, not totally literally. And if I did have to physically restrain him, he'd fight me harder if you were watching, so, no."

"If I kissed him, I bet he wouldn't fight at all."

"You offering to help?"

"Um...well...yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be like the hospital, when he had to sneak in every night. I could just be there, as much as I could get away."

"That would be great. Here we are." The car stopped, the electronic blindfold vanished, the handcuffs released her and her door opened, all at once. "This way, Ms. Ritchi." Minion led her downstairs to the pool room, past the hydraulic devices (which she made an effort to stare at as if she'd never seen them before) and through a door in the far wall. The Evil Overlord appeared to be unconscious, lying on his back in a bed that had high sides, as if he might fall out. Two brainbots hovered near the head of the bed.

Then she got close and saw that the top of the bed was a shallow bathtub; his body, from the shoulders down, was submerged in some kind of light brown liquid, like a weak tea. _Ask a fish for medical care, what's the first thing he's going to recommend?_ She felt a wash of tenderness and concern at how vulnerable he looked without his costume. A large bandage was taped over his head wound. The little dot electrodes attached to him here and there had no wires, but a screen on the wall was keeping track of his vital signs. The four bullet bruises made a diagonal line of purple across his midsection. The sight of them just reached right into her heart. A sheet draped across the bed concealed the lower half of his body. She bent over him. He was breathing shallowly, using only the top of his chest. She started to touch his face, then held off because she didn't want to wake him.

"She's here, Sir." He opened his eyes then, and looked into hers. She felt a wave of relief.

"Your smile has anagesic properties," he said. She hadn't noticed that she was smiling. She let her hand, soft in its bandages, go to his cheek and they just looked at each other, glowing.

"Minion, may we have some priv-acy?"

"Sure thing, boss. And Ms. Ritchi? Remember, he's injured."

Roxanne looked over her shoulder at the fish. "Now, come on. I'm not going to climb on top of him."

"Actually, the last time I saw a woman look at him the way you're looking at him, that's exactly what she did."

"I remember that one," said Megamind. "We were in the car. Minion was driving."

"I was never so embarrassed in my life," added the fish.

"She got an unpleasant surprise when, instead of embracing her, I gave her a scolding for treating my best friend as if he were part of the equipment. Then I had him pull over to the curb and open her door. She said something rude about my manhood as she got out and that was the last we saw of her."

"See, to me that makes you more of a man," Roxanne responded. "A teenage boy is controlled by his dick. A man has a dick, but it doesn't run his life."

"Mine isn't going to be running anything for the time being. My body has other uses for that blood. My heart, on the other hand, is entirely at your disposal."

Minion quietly left. They heard the door close.

"They say that positive emotions make you heal faster," she said. "So let's see about making some." She bent down and put her lips to his. He tasted slightly of medicine, but for all his injuries, his kiss had lost none of its energy.

When they came up for air, he said "Is that a hand I feel against my face?" She pulled off the glove-bandage using the backs of the fingers of her other hand, which she was getting quite good at, held it up so he could see it and flexed her fingers. He looked at it fondly.

"Look. Full range of motion. And the scars are small. When they're healed a little more, I can hide them with make-up." As soon as she said it, his face fell.

"I didn't have time to make up before the attack. What did I look like? Did I look pitiful?"

"You were backlit. I'm sure it wasn't obvious."

"You're sure? You say that the way humans say it when they're not sure, when they don't know. Hasn't it been broadcast?"

"It went out live. I just haven't seen it yet." She explained what she'd been doing since the battle.

"Minion?" he called out.

"Yeah, boss." The reply came from a speaker in the ceiling.

"What kind of coverage are we getting?"

"Live battle from the point where it went through the window on Eight, tail end of the battle on the others, interview with Siligili-Reii on Five and then teasers. Seven was speculating about whether you're alive, but then Eight said you're in stable condition."

Roxanne broke in. "What do you think, guys? Want to issue a statement? I could do a quick interview with Minion."

"Let's catch up first. Show me the live battle, please, and then the interview."

"Will do, sir." The room darkened. One of the brainbots sank down below the level of the bed and began to project the coverage of the battle onto the ceiling. Roxanne pulled off her other glove-bandage so she could put her hand on her blue man's shoulder. She wondered if the brown liquid would help her burns. She watched with him, getting a little bit of a crick in her neck, not minding. She had to admit that Hal had adapted to the multi-lens camera as if he'd been born with one on his shoulder. Megamind was, indeed, backlit until he went down, and the corpse-like look he had as he was carried off was something nobody was going to attribute to lack of make-up.

While they were watching the interview with Siligili-Reii, another station had an interview with Bernard Schmidt on the subject of the battle and its implications, so Minion switched them into it.

"-doesn't pull through?" an interviewer was asking Bernard.

"We'll have to hope that Minion can hold things together, either by bringing in one of Megamind's associates as Overlord or by renaming himself and taking power on his own. There is no telling what kind of Evil Overlord he would be, or even if he would use that title. What we do know is that, if he were to simply abdicate, then the city would be in play. Supervillains from all over the world would converge on Metro City, each hoping to rule here. The resulting struggle would be extremely destructive, with none of the contenders having any particular regard for the lives of citizens, human or otherwise."

"So the best thing we can hope for, at this point, is that Megamind survives and continues to rule."

"Aside from the rise of a new hero. Ironically, considering that we feared him for years, he is now our best hope."

When the lights came up, Megamind was frowning. "We do need a statement. Live footage showing Minion and myself on camera together so there will be no doubt of my survival."

"Sir, you shouldn't stand up yet."

"I know, but what if I hovered in a jet pack? The brainbots could hold me up while they got me ready and then put me into it. I needn't stand at all."

"I guess that could work. Not too long, though."

"Two minutes on the eleven o'clock news?" Roxanne suggested.


	13. Chapter 13

There's a drawing associated with this chapter. It's at megamindmovie dot livejournal dot com slash 1176882 dot html. (This site doesn't allow embedded links, so you'll have to assemble the URL yourself. It's well worth it.)

* * *

While Megamind got dried off, dressed and ready, Roxanne called her boss from the control center in the lair, since its shielding kept her from using her cell phone. Frank scheduled the statement for third in the line-up, after the recap of the battle and selections from the interview with Siligili-Reii.

In addition to assuring the world of his continued survival and explaining that he was in a jet pack because it was easier on his injuries, the Evil Overlord let Minion describe his latest online discoveries.

"The attackers tried to flee toward the lake, so I figured they were headed for a ship. I found this one on satellite photo." The mechanical hand worked a remote and an overhead view of a ship came onto the screen, the crossed blades of a parked helicopter visible on its deck. "It's a freighter, but it's armed to the teeth. Those things along the edges are guns. So I sent a lakebot out to take pictures of it." Another photo showed a side view of the ship. "Its name is the Abu Yaseed. It's from a little tiny country called Djibouti, and for most of its career, it's been moving freight around the Arabian Sea and down the east coast of Africa. This is its first time on this side of the Atlantic, according to the official records, anyway. It was supposed to have delivered a cargo of South African fruit products to Chicago three days ago, but there's no records in the Port of Chicago database of any cargo being unloaded from it. And I found a fax of the contract for that theoretical cargo." An image of a document in French came up on the screen, then zoomed in on the top paragraph. A name was highlighted: Institut des Sciences Minerales de Lugano. "Kinda funny company to be shipping fruit juice."

"That's the Lugano Institute for Mineral Sciences, Pietro Olivetti's employer," exclaimed Roxanne as the screen went back to her and the two aliens.

"That's right, Ms. Ritchi," replied Megamind. "This is the organization that got most of the profit from Olivetti's many years of exploitation of Siligili-Reii. They're clearly not satisfied with the profit they've already got and they're trying to get some more."

"Do you figure they were planning to pack her into that helicopter and fly her to Switzerland?"

"Or to whatever prospecting site Olivetti was shed-uled to research next."

"So what's your next move? Bring in that ship?"

"There have been no further attacks from the ship, so I am inclined to merely keep an eye on it. I hope it does attack. I'd enjoy a real naval battle, but the wise thing at this point is to leave the next move up to this Luganese institute, or to its Renoite parent corporation. We have twelve dehydrated prisoners, or should I say hostages? As we identify them and discover their weaknesses, I'm sure my great brain will come up with interesting ways to menace them, just to keep the game going."

"Are you going to release their names?"

"Once we're done with the questioning, yes, there will be names, but I'm not going to set a time. With dehydration, there's no hurry, and the cubes can be hidden almost anywhere. The bottleneck right now is the supply of supersecure cells in which to imprison these heroes when they're not dehydrated, so I'm considering building a few new ones, with improvements of my own design. In the meantime, I am expecting a new attack at any moment, so vigilance will be increased and selected goodies from the Arsenal of Evil will be taken out and put through their paces."

"And KMCP Traffic Alert will have updates if any roads are blocked off during testing. This is Roxanne Ritchi, reporting."

As soon as the camera cut, Minion insisted that Megamind get back in the immersion bed - "the soup", as he called it. He got no arguments. Roxanne waited by the pool until the fish said she could come into the little infirmary. The blue man smiled at her tenderly as she came in, and when she put her hand on his shoulder, he cuddled the side of his head against her arm.

"I must admit, I feel much better horizontal and immersed," he said.

"Didn't Minion put nerve blocks in?"

"It's not the specific pain of the injuries. It's the biochemical effects of the organ damage. Feels awful all over, but worse when I'm upright and trying to maintain my presentation. And, of course, your presence makes everything better." More kissing ensued. Then...

"Listen, handsome. I've got a suggestion. Why not, instead of just menacing those prisoners, trying to raise doubts in their minds about the goodness of their mission?"

"You mean trying to corrupt them?"

"I wouldn't go that far. Just get them questioning their leadership and the value of their assignment. There's a lot about what they're doing that's morally iffy. Here are some arguments you could use..."

They spent the next hour plotting.

Upstairs at the main computer console, Minion pulled out images of the five fangirls who had shouted a warning as the attack began from the brainbot film archive. These he put into a face-recognition software process to find out who they were. He knew it would take hours, so he left it to run by itself.

When Siligili-Reii had gathered up the dehydration cubes, she found fifteen. Three of them were known to be brainbots, but there was no telling which three they were. Minion arranged for her to take them to Metro City General Hospital, where each was rehydrated in an examining room by a doctor while the city's newest alien covering them with the de-gun. Each prisoner was identified, got a quick medical exam, and then was returned to cube form and carefully labeled. Then she walked home to Evil Lair with her brainbot escort, hearing the English word "Congratulations" so often from the Friday night partying crowds that, by the time she got there, she had it memorized.

She arrived slightly before 1 a.m. and spent five minutes in the infirmary with Megamind and Minion. Roxanne was there, too, looking on as they spoke in their own language. Watching the female alien take Megamind's hand in both of hers and press it to the top of her muzzle, then do the same with one of Minion's, she understood enough. Siligili-Reii knew that the pair could have decided she wasn't worth fighting for and let her be captured, but instead they had risked their lives to keep her free. She was deeply grateful and knew she owed them.

After she went out, Minion opened a panel in the wall and rolled out a hospital bed. He said it was time for the boss to get out of the soup and ready to sleep. Roxanne went upstairs to the console and called her mother, then went into the bathroom and applied more aloe vera gelly to her burns. When she came back, the immersion bed was gone and Megamind was in the hospital bed, with a johnny on, a pillow under his head and blankets over him. Minion left as soon as she came in.

"Whenever I am injured," the blue man said, "Minion gets out of his suit and into his globe so he can share the bed with me, as we used to do when we were small. He's changing now. I won't be able to cuddle him because of the location of my injuries, but he will rest close to me and it will help me heal."

"Oh," she said, imagining the fish in a globe, rolling into the room. "Does he need my help to get in the bed?"

Megamind shook his head. "He can control his suit even when he isn't in it, so long as he's very close by, so he will have it pick him up and carry him here. What I was wondering was if you were willing..." He trailed off, clearly embarrassed to complete his request.

"If I would also, um, rest close to you?" she guessed, smiling.

He nodded.

"Sure," she said. "We'll just have to be careful of each other's injuries." She wasn't wearing pantyhose, so she just stepped out of her shoes as she climbed up on the bed and settled in with her head on his shoulder, still in the skirt and blouse she'd put on for her restaurant dinner. Her first instinct was to wrap an arm around his chest, but she was afraid it might slide down onto his injuries during the night, so she carefully wrapped one hand around his bicep. "Is this good?"

"Mmm," he replied. "Wonderful."

The door opened. Even though she'd been warned, it was still a shock to see Minion's gorilla suit walk in without a tank, carrying a transparent globe containing Minion himself. She felt for a moment like she was in an alien version of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". The globe wasn't open on top, and she didn't see any filtration apparatus.

"Wow," she said as the suit came up on the far side of the bed and set Minion down on Megamind's lap. "Doesn't the water get stale in there?"

"The whole surface is a kind of smart membrane," the fish replied. "It grabs oxygen out of the air and releases waste gases. Before the boss built my first suit, I lived in one of these."

"Minion, could you slide my legs over so you can rest between me and Roxanne? I would do it myself but that would involve my abdominal muscles."

"Sure thing, Boss." The empty suit slid its hands under the blankets and pulled his legs toward it a few inches, then moved the globe so it rested between his hip and Roxanne's belly. She folded her legs up to keep it in place. "How is everybody? Comfy?"

"I'm fine," said Roxanne.

"As comfy as my injuries allow," said Megamind. "With the close company of the two people I love most in the world, I cannot help but have a swift recovery."

"And now for the latest development in the Metro City situation. The Executive Council of the North American League of Heroes will be meeting later today to plan a joint action against Megamind, Evil Overlord of that city, who is holding the twelve heroes who went in last night to bring the murderer Siligili-Reii to justice."

Roxanne and Megamind were watching the national news. He was back in the immersion bed while she was lying on the hospital bed, which had been pulled up close so she could touch him through the rails.

"Do you hear that, Roxanne? The whole League of Heroes! I can hardly wait! What do you suppose they'll do?"

"Hmm. Good question. If I were them, I'd want more information."

"Roxanne, you always want more information."

"No, seriously. I'd want to know why last night's mission failed. Hey. That gives me an idea. If you want to delay the next battle long enough so you can heal, release the prisoners slowly, like one every two days. They won't want to attack as long as there's more information they can get by waiting a little longer. You can stretch it out until you've done most of your healing, and in the meantime you can implement that subversion plan we were talking about last night."

Destructo-Saur took a little walk from the industrial district. It gouged out the seal of the city from the bottom of the reflecting pool in City Hall Plaza, which had been empty since the explosion that destroyed most of the Metro Man Museum had cracked the underground pipes that fed it. Then the giant machine had reached into City Hall, gouged out the one from the floor of the former mayor's office, and walked back, becoming invisible as it crossed onto the peninsula. Observers on the upper floors of tall buildings along the route reported that Siligili-Reii was at the controls. Brainbots worked through the night and well into the next day. When they were done, a new seal was set into both surfaces. It showed the city's skyline at night, with the beam of the Death Ray, the windows of the buildings and the moon above the city both made of some material that actually glowed at night. Observers noticed over the next few weeks that the moon in the new seal waxed and waned with the real Moon, and that, as it waned, Megamind's emblem was revealed, blue on black.

When Cowboy Joe was first rehydrated, he was lying face down on a slightly padded but smooth surface, not quite unconscious. His ears were ringing and he had the kind of headache that means a slight concussion. He was forty-one and had been a superhero since he was eighteen, and he'd been hurt worse than this plenty of times. It didn't hurt as much as the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes: Siligili-Reii holding that damned dehydration gun on him. It meant the mission had failed.

A pad of paper was held in front of his eyes with writing on it: _Can you hear?_ He reached up to his ear and took out one of the custom radio-earphones that everyone on the mission had worn, that allowed them to speak with each other without being deafened by the submachine gun. The paper withdrew. He followed it with his eyes and saw a middle-aged woman in a doctor's white coat. She gave him the usual medical once-over, told him he was concussed and needed to rest (which he could have told her) and nodded at the alien. Next thing he knew, he was dehydrated again.

He came back the second time on the bed in a small room that was furnished as a hotel room, right down to the little bar of soap in the bathroom corner, which was behind a screen. The only things it was missing were windows and doors. Instead of either, there was a ceiling about twenty feet up with seams where part or all of it would roll away. It was your basic supercell design. He'd seen cells like it before, but from the outside, looking down at some imprisoned supervillain. It was usually furnished as a prison cell, too. In Joe's experience, these fake-British-accent supervillains either tried to dazzle a prisoner with luxury, or you woke up in a dungeon, or in a high-tech death trap, with cameras blazing and the menacing about to start. The Holiday Inn treatment was new. So was the doctor. Supervillains didn't usually get their prisoners medical care, unless the prisoner was a pretty woman. Maybe the Evil Overlord was a fag and had the hots for him. Never happened before, but there's a first time for everything.

His hat, which he'd last seen in the claws of a brainbot, was on the table. There were sandwiches in the little fridge. There was cable TV. As he rested up, as the concussion healed and he began to remember the details of the battle, he tried to work out what had gone wrong. He concluded that the problem was inexperience. Most of the team were either kids too young to buy their own beer, or they were from little places like Billings and Berne that didn't get much action, places that only had heroes because they had patrons, usually a government or corporation, willing to fund the position. He had thought, when planning this mission, that the sheer overkill of having a team of twelve to take out three villains and a bunch of machines would have been enough to make up for that, but it looked like he was wrong.

He used the TV schedule to keep track of time. When it said he'd been there about twenty-four hours, the Toyota commercial he was ignoring was suddenly replaced by the face of Megamind, smiling and relaxed, apparently in his usual black swivel chair. There was something funny about his posture, but Joe couldn't quite figure out what it was.

"Cowboy Joe! Good afternoon. I hope you are enjoying my city's hospitality. I want you to know that I have extended the same to your entire team. They are all either unharmed or healing nicely. Now, I wonder if you're feeling recovered enough for a little battle of wits."

Joe was, in fact, much more recovered than a standard human would have been. He was tempted to hide it, but he was tired of not knowing what was going on beyond what the TV news told him. In a battle of wits, he might learn something.

"Thanks, I guess. I mean, I know you evil fellers don't always tell the truth, so I ain't sure as how I b'lieve you, but I see where you're makin' an effort to ease my mind about my people, and I 'preciate that. Now, I don't know that my poor ol' noggin is a match for that big one o' yours, even when it hasn't just had a rifle busted over it a couple of days ago, but I'll try you, just to see."

"Your pose of humility fools no one who knows your history. You have outwitted some very smart opponents, although admittedly none of my caliber. But I was wondering. Siligili-Reii killed Pietro Olivetti in Ecuador. Weren't you curious about why no Ecuadoreans offered to be part of your team? They've got a couple of impressive heroes. Didn't you want them along?"

"Now, I wasn't privy to the negotiations," Joe lied. The Ecuadorean refusal to send a hero had really pissed him off. "But from what I unnerstand, they said that Olivetti was an American citizen and his killer is on American soil, so, far as they're concerned, it's an American problem."

"If they had said that, it would have been quite contrary to their usual policy. However, that's not what they said. I have here a copy of the official letter from the Procurador General de la República, the equivalent of Attorney General, which Minion hacked out of their document database. Computer system security in these Third World countries is so often laughable. No, what they said, officially, is that in cases where the killer has been subjected by the victim to severe abuse, imprisonment or other denial of basic rights from which the killer was only able to escape by the killing, as is clearly the case here, the finding will be one of self-defense and no action will be taken. They refused to send someone to bring her in because they don't think she's a murderer."

"But that ain't the point. That Pietro Olivetti signed a contract when he went to work for LIMS, sayin' that if he died while employed by LIMS, all documents, equipment an' livin' organisms that he used in the course o' his work for them would become the property of LIMS. He sure used that Siligili-Reii, and that means she sure is the property of LIMS now, ain't she? We're jus' here to return her to her rightful owner."

"She's a citizen now, and that means she can't be anyone's property."

"Aw, that's a load of villainous shit. Look, when I was a boy, I had a talkin' horse. Smarter than a lot o' people I've known, and better, in his own way. He saved my life a couple o' times. But what if my folks hadn't been able to buy him for me? What if he'd been free to decide he'd rather live in a wild horse preserve and have nothin' to do with us two-legs?"

"I fail to see your point."

"The point is that you cain't jus' let critters do whatever they want, no matter how smart they are. America couldn't of been built, hell, civilization couldn't of been built, without man bein' able to own the other critters. It's in the Bible. Genesis Chapter One, Verse Twenty-seven. He gave us dominion over every livin' thing that moveth upon the earth."

"Siligili-Reii is not a 'critter'. Her people were traveling in space when your ancestors were using stone arrowheads."

"She damned well is a critter. Maybe on her own planet she was a woman, but this here is Earth. She's got four legs. She's a critter and she's got an owner and the owner's rights are what counts here."

"I see. And was this the mission as you described it to the rest of your team? To risk their lives returning a valuable head of livestock to the corporation that holds, or claims to hold, legal title to her? If I play them the recording of this conversation we've been having, will they all agree with your reasoning?" That was when Joe realized that Megamind had nailed him, because of course he hadn't said that to the idealistic city kids on the team, and especially not to that cat-gal Ferocity. He'd told them that they were there to bring a murderer to justice and, if possible, to free the people of Metro City from the Evil Overlord. If the blue bastard been recording this all along, and if he played it back for them, and if they believed it, then the team was history. None of them would ever work with him again. But Joe knew better than to let Megamind know that.

"They agreed when I first laid it out for 'em," he said, "and I don't think a day in a comfy cell is gonna be enough to change their minds."

Megamind grinned broadly, the grin of victory that told Joe he hadn't controlled his face and his tone of voice well enough. Damn concussion.

"You heroes are such poor liars," he said. "Ciao, ciao." And suddenly Joe was looking at a baseball game.

He shut it off, fuming. _If I ever get outa here, I'm gonna see that blue bastard rot in a hole like this forever. And I'm gonna buy that computer-hackin' fish o' his jus' so I can barbecue it Cajun-style._

Fifteen minutes later, he realized what had been odd about the Evil Overlord's posture. He had been filmed as if sitting in a swivel chair, but the state of his muscles was that of a man lying flat on his back. The chair back must have been faked somehow. Which meant the memory of Megamind getting gut-shot wasn't just wishful thinking. It made Cowboy Joe grin. _At least I got you, you son of a bitch._


	14. Chapter 14

"This is Elaine Ridenow. Welcome to Philosophy in the News, a program of commentary on current events. Our first topic will be the victory of Megamind, self-proclaimed Evil Overlord of Metro City, in the recent battle at Metro City Hall. My first guest is Pushpa Uttal, Professor of History at Ohio State University and author of the book _Historical Forces in Everyday Life_. Pushpa, it's well known that bad guys always lose. Why is Megamind still in power?"

"Elaine, when we say that bad guys always lose, we are stating the basic principle of ethical causality. This is a poorly understood but statistically well-documented phenomenon: when opponents come together in battle, personal virtue is as big a factor in the outcome as material factors such as strength, speed and cunning. Megamind is perhaps the most intelligent individual on Earth and he has always taken this into account. As a villain, he was always concerned to avoid harm to bystanders. Since coming to power, he has taken no lives, even during the very destructive celebratory phase at the beginning of his reign. Since that time, he has been engaged in an artful strategy of public actions which are substantively good, or at least harmless, but carried out in a menacing or dictatorial way. In this way he has, without being obvious about it, laid a very strong ethical base for himself which makes him much harder to defeat than an ordinary villain."

"So the outcome of this battle was settled weeks before it happened in the operating theater at Metro City General Hospital."

"Most likely."

"So is he still evil?"

"An important factor here is that Megamind's declared alignment is evil. This counts for as much as his actions. In theory, a villain could perform enough acts of virtue and self-sacrifice to become undefeatable except via divine intervention, while still remaining technically evil, but all the cases of this actually happening are so far back in recorded history that they are, for all practical purposes, mythological. Megamind is a very tough villain in that he understands the power of ethical causality enough to use it to his own advantage, but he's still a villain as long as he says he is."

###

"I have come to a decision." Megamind had been thinking things over very thoroughly while waiting for Roxanne to get out of work. He was so impatient to tell her that he began as soon as their kiss of greeting was over. "City Hall is not really defensible. Therefore I shall build a proper palace, and I want to include a suite of rooms for you. So think about what sort of space you'd like, how you want it equipped and so forth. All my technological expertise is at your disposal for this project, so don't let yourself be limited by what is known by humans to be possible."

###

Mojave didn't have superstrength, so he was rehydrated in an ordinary room. It even had a window, although the window had a grid of iron bars just outside the glass, and of course the door wouldn't budge when he tried it. It also had a toy made just for him, a transparent cube half a yard on a side, with eight transparent bowls on little stands inside and an earth-tone rainbow of eight colored powders spilled dramatically together on the bottom. There was a card next to it on the coffee table, listing what each color was. The dark gray powder was lead, the white powder was chalk, the rust-colored powder was rust, the beige powder was some kind of plastic, and so forth.

Mojave's power was a very specialized kind of telekinesis. He could only lift tiny things with his mind, but he could lift a lot of them. Millions at a time. He had learned as a boy that he could stop a fight by sending dust into the combatants' faces. When he had graduated high school, two years before, Cowboy Joe had recruited him. His main job on missions was to foul evil machinery by forcing dust into it. Interfering with villains' eyesight was a secondary task, and on this mission Joe had brought in another super for that, a French girl named Argentée from Geneva, Switzerland, who could bend light.

Argentée was seventeen and gorgeous. Mojave had met her the day before the mission and fantasized about her intensely that night, but now when he thought about her, he worried, because he didn't know what had happened to her. So, to keep from worrying, he watched the news and he did kata and he used the new toy to practice with his power. Sorting the different colors, making sculptures with them (that collapsed as soon as he quit concentrating on them) then whipping them into a whirlwind that filled the inside of the cube, then sorting them again. It had occurred to him that the Evil Overlord might have provided this thing in order to study his powers, to learn how to counter them, and for a little while he stopped using it, but then he reasoned that whatever Megamind learned would be balanced out by the value of the practice it gave him. Besides, the enjoyment he got from it kept him from going crazy, alone in here with almost no information.

He was working on keeping the colors separate while they moved, keeping each color in its own layer and the layers spinning at different speeds, when the television blinked on, showing the face of Megamind.

"Good morning, Mojave. How are you finding the powders box?"

"This thing? Using it to prepare myself to defeat you."

"That's excellent. I always appreciate a good fight. Now, I selected the powders, no only for their distinct colors, but for distinct weights. Do you find that the different weights helps you keep them separate?"

Mojave grinned at the screen. "You want information, you gotta give information."

"Bargaining!" The blue alien gave a low, evil chuckle (because it was easier on his fractured rib than the full-on evil laugh, but Mojave didn't need to know that). "You're at my mercy, your mission is a failure, you have no notion of where in the city you are or whether you'll ever get out, and you're bargaining with me! I am the Evil Overlord of Metrocity, incredible handsome criminal genius and master of all villainy, the defeater of the most powerful man in the universe, who haunts the nightmares of millions! You are a pipsqueak human, barely old enough to shave, with one underdeveloped talent and a badly designed costume. How do you even dare to bargain with me?"

"I'm on the side of Good," Mojave replied, "and Good always wins in the end."

"Are you? One thing you must have learned about villains is that we tend to fight among ourselves, and occasionally one of us can mislead some good people into fighting on their side. Have you considered that perhaps the reason you lost is that you're not fighting on the side of Good this time? Surely you must have noticed that your team is made up of heroes who are very young, or from somewhere out of the way, where life is simple and so is crime, heroes who are naive enough to be misled?"

"But not Cowboy Joe. He's been around the block plenty of times, and he's based in Reno. You want to tell me they don't have smart criminals there?"

"The Renoite criminal element includes some subtle schemers, all right, but the subtlest and schemingest he has never touched because they control the corporation that pays him."

"What are you saying, that Cowboy Joe would fight for an evil cause just because the money guys tell him to? That's a lie."

"I had a little conversation with your revered Cowboy Joe just recently. I shall play it back for you." The scene switched to one of Reno's hero sprawled in an easy chair, looking up as Megamind's voice greeted him. The whole conversation replayed. The visual portion was entirely of Cowboy Joe, even when Megamind was speaking, to show the hero's full set of facial reactions. (This had been Roxanne's suggestion. Megamind could never get enough of his own face on screens, but she got him to see that the listener's reactions were important.) Only when it ended did the Evil Overlord reappear on the screen.

"You faked that," said Mojave before the blue man had a chance to speak.

"Oh, did I?" Megamind chuckled again. "Then why don't you go and research it?" Unseen machinery worked. The door to Mojave's room swung open. "Find out what the Ecuadorean official position is, and the positions of SAMCORP and LIMS. You are free to go, but neither the Abu Yaseed nor its helicopter will be allowed to land, and I'm not lending you cab fare. You must find your own way home. Farewell."

"Wait! Where are the others?" He had been warned that asking a villain about one person, thus showing that he had feelings for her, might cause the villain to single her out for especially nasty treatment, so he asked about the team as a whole. "How many of us have you got? Are they all alive?"

"If you want information, you must give information."

"What do you want to know?"

"Think back. What was my question?"

"All right, yes. The different weights of the powders did help me sort them out."

"Hmm. I may have a use for you in the future."

"What do you mean?"

"Now, you've only answered one question and you've asked two. Do you want me to tell you what I mean, or do you want me to tell you about the rest of your team?"

"Tell me about the rest of the team."

"What's the magic word?"

"Please."

"Your team are all alive and my prisoners. Ferocity, Cowboy Joe, Catamount, Big Sky, Saguaro and Der Kleiner Bar are all a bit the worse for wear, but nothing that won't heal. The others are uninjured. I'm going to be playing them the same recording I played you and then, possibly, depending on their reaction, setting them free. Except for Cowboy Joe. I've got something special in mind for him. Ciao, ciao."

###

Over the next week and a half, Megamind went through the same process with the other five uninjured prisoners. The three Americans all accused him of faking the conversation between him and Cowboy Joe. The two Swiss said, instead, that it didn't matter, that obedience to authority was the most important virtue. Argentée wept when she said it.

"Eet ees hard, but eet ees ze truz," she said in her heavy French accent. Megamind felt terrible, and felt ashamed of feeling terrible, because a supervillain should delight in the tears of superheroines. He ended up telling her what the others were having to find out on their own. "There's an old man who used to work for Metro Mahn's family. He's borrowed the family yacht, which no one is using these days, and he's got it tied up at the marina, Slip Twenty-seven. Every time I announce that I've released another hero, he goes into the city, finds that hero and ferries them out to the Abu Yaseed. Sometimes it takes hours and hours before he and the hero connect, but if you go right down there, you can be out of the city in fifteen minutes."

If any of the heroes had looked closely at the exceptionally tall "old man", they would have seen that the whiteness of his beard was a temporary color and the hair emerging from his knitted cap was a wig, but none of them did. Wayne hadn't checked in with the Evil Overlord before he disguised himself and started running his water taxi service. Megamind had found out about it when he had invisible brainbots follow the heroes to film their actions and listen in on any conversations they got into. Once he learned about it, Megamind was not inclined to interfere. He knew that he and Wayne were both working to keep Siligili-Reii free, and that anything relevant the former hero discovered from talking with the freed heroes would be used for that purpose.

###

Mohenjo Daro was taking it easy, as he usually did between gigs. There had been a horse earlier in the day, not the kind of tame, elderly animal they fed him when he was working, but a wild mustang culled from the herd in one of the national forests, prey that would really give him a good chase. He'd eaten as much of it as he wanted, taken a nap, and then gone for a swim. He was sprawled poolside, letting the Southern California heat dry his fur, when he heard the car drive up and two humans get out. By her scent and the rhythm of her footsteps, he recognized one of them as Natalie Brandt, his best friend, manager, interpreter of human behavior and, if you want to get technical about it, owner, although the relationship had been on a more-or-less equal footing ever since he grew past cubhood. The other was a stranger, male and... Mohenjo sniffed again, trying to remember what that scent reminded him of. Then they came around the corner of the house and the costume told him. Hero. A hero he'd seen before, not in person, but on the big screen in the house's theater. A hero whose name he should be able to think of.

"Hi, Mo," said Natalie. "This is Angelus." That was it. Defender of Los Angeles. One of the major names in the League of Heroes. Big shot. Treat like a studio executive. The world's only talking tiger rose to his feet.

"Angelus," he said, and the correct kind of polite lie, in which Natalie had carefully coached him, came to his furry lips. "I've admired you for a long time."

The blond superhero smiled down at him. "The feeling is mutual, Mohenjo."

"Call me Mo. So what brings you out to the ranch?" Natalie pulled up chairs and the humans sat down, which put them at eye level with Mo, who sat on his haunches. "If somebody at Universal pulled a favor to get you to ask me to work for them again, it's not happening."

"This has nothing to do with movie work," Angelus replied. "What we need is a large, dangerous talking animal to infiltrate Megamind's operation."

"Define infiltrate."

"Get him to hire you, probably as part of his security team. Find out all you can about his defenses and his plans. Relay the information to us. And if you get the chance to capture him, by all means go for it." The big animal gazed at the pavement in thought while Manuel, one of the house staff, brought drinks for Natalie and Angelus. Finally, he looked up.

"This is supposed to be the smartest guy in the world. He's gonna know I'm the highest paid four-legged star in Hollywood. Why should he believe that I'd want to give up my career, leave the ranch, leave California, move to Michigan, which has four months of winter every year, and spend the rest of my life as, basically, a security guard?"

"For freedom," said Natalie in the particular tone of voice she used when explaining the motivations of a character he'd been hired to play. "For independence. For self-determination. Because you want to be your own person. Because you believe in what he's doing, not just for you, but for everyone like you, for future generations of sentient animals everywhere. Because you're sick and tired of taking shit from humans."

"Heh." The tiger couldn't really laugh, but he'd learned to make this little sound when he recognized human humor.

"So this is an acting job, but I won't have a script or a director and there won't be any cameras."

"There will be cameras," said Angelus. "Megamind has roughly seven hundred brainbots on the streets of Metro City at any given time, and every one of them has a built-in video lens that, we have to assume, is on continuously, transmitting everything it sees to a central computer in Megamind's hidden lair. Finding out where that lair is, by the way, is one of our top goals. I've got a Power Point here with the highlights of what we know about Megamind and his operation. I can play it for you so you can get a feel for the situation you'll be going into. We can watch it now if this is a good time." He started to rise.

"Wait a minute," said the tiger. "Have you talked to Natalie about money, or are you expecting me to do this out of pure civic-mindedness?"

"We have backers who are willing to pay your regular rate," replied the hero.

"Not enough. This isn't a movie set where the guns all shoot blanks and the punches are all pulled. I want combat pay."

"I think that can be arranged. But first, why don't we watch the video so you can see whether you want to do this at all?"

"Okay." The three rose, the humans picking up their drinks, and moved into the house.

###

Two weeks after the battle, the Evil Overlord acquired another prisoner. Roxanne was basically living at the lair, going out only for work and to get fresh clothes. She was in the office when "Enter Sandman" played again.

"Hi, Minion."

"It's me, my love. We've just been attacked again. It's so cute!"

"Wait, what? You've been attacked and it's cute?"

"You know that Ferocity is married to a standard human, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he's here. Came all by himself with his little police-issue pistol and tried to get into City Hall. Thought he was going to hold me up at gunpoint and make me release her. So romantic! Your viewers will love it!" Roxanne didn't usually do human interest stories, but she knew no other reporter would be given this story, and it was too good to pass up.

"Where is he being held?"

"In Minion's hand at the moment. But here's what I was thinking. She's in one of those rooms we commandeered at the Marriott. We'll take over another, one of the larger rooms, and we'll divide it in half with a hologram wall and sound dampeners..."

###

"This is Roxanne Ritchi reporting from one of the Evil Overlord's prisoner holding rooms. I'm here to interview Mark Danton, who earlier today attempted to enter City Hall unannounced, while armed with a pistol, in an attempt to free his wife, Ferocity, Defender-in-training of Edmonton, Alberta, who was captured in the attack two weeks ago. With me is Minion and there are several brainbots around the room. Mister Danton, why did you think you could succeed where a dozen heroes failed?" Mark Danton was about Roxanne's age, medium height, pale and slender, with brown hair in a businessman's cut. He looked at the carpet until he began to speak, and then he looked at Roxanne, not into the camera. Clearly he wasn't used to on-camera interviews.

"I guess I didn't think," he replied. "It was an emotional decision. The League kept waiting in case Megamind released her on his own and he'd release someone every couple of days, but it was never her and I... just... couldn't stand the tension anymore." He looked down again.

"I'm sure many of us can understand. Minion, why is Ferocity still being held when so many of her fellow heroes have been released?"

"Mainly, Ms. Ritchi, the boss decided to release the less injured prisoners first. She's got hairline fractures of her sternum and some ribs. It's not that serious, but he figured it wouldn't hurt her to just hang out for a while."

"And where is she now?"

"Actually, she's right -" the fish paused to turn away from the camera, raise a remote in one metal hand, and push a button "- here." The wall behind them vanished, revealing another hotel room where a television showed the interview they were conducting, as it was going out live and, rising in a blur from the chair facing the TV, Ferocity. She stood for a split second with her claws out, braced for battle. Then she said "Mark," at the same time her husband said "Terri," and the two came together, embracing with everything they had.

The camera moved around them so that, when they drew back to look into each other's eyes, they were in profile. Among the furniture in the background was another television with its screen dark. Suddenly it came on, showing Megamind with a sentimental smile on his face.

"So sweet," he said. "And now you are both free to go. Minion, please give Mr. Danton his pistol back. Not the bullets. He'll have to replace those." Minion obeyed, popping out the cartridge and handing Danton the empty gun.

"Thank you," said Ferocity hesitantly, as if she didn't quite believe it.

"You should also feel free to stay in Metrocity a little longer. Rest up, see the city that's good for bad, spy a little if you like."

"After all this, you don't want us out right away?"

"Well, your husband has got what he came for, and you, I think, are intelligent enough to know better than to come against me all by yourself. Till we meet again in another exciting episode, ciao, ciao." The screen went blank.


	15. Chapter 15

Big Sky was a Western hero, but from a different mold than Cowboy Joe. In contrast to the Renoite's clean-shaven blond wholesomeness, the hero of Billings cultivated a black Fu Manchu mustache. He was a quarter Apsáalooke, Defender of the Reservation as well as the City, and ritual items intended for spiritual protection had been sewn into his costume by his great-aunt who was a medicine woman. He had been rehydrated five days after the battle and had been cooling his heels in his overfurnished supercell for the next eleven, recovering and watching the news, when the Evil Overlord finally appeared on his TV.

"Hey, Megamind. I've been lookin' forward to havin' a little chat with you. 'Course, I figured you'd be on the inside o' the cell and I'd be on the outside, but this'll do."

"Really. You are the first hero who has ever expressed a desire to speak with me. I presume that your topic will be justice."

"Kinda."

"Go on."

"See, we always figured, if any supervillain ever did take over a city, he'd either trash it or form up the citizens into a slave army, like they used to do in the old historical times, an' try to conquer the whole region, as a start on conquerin' the world, 'cause Evil's never satisfied, right? An' you did start out trashin' it, but then you kinda made a halfway turn around, and now here you are, mostly lettin' things run along like in any other city, an' you're jus' kinda ridin' along on top. Ever' so often, you innerfere, and the innerferences gener'ly end up makin' the city stronger, or at least more innerestin'. It's almost like in your own perverse, sinister way, you're takin' care of it."

"Exactly! This city is my prized possession, my crown jewel, and the rest of the world can go hang. Do you know anything about minerals? Silicon dioxide, better known as quartz, naturally forms a very pure-looking transparent or white crystal, but if that crystal is irradiated, the invisible impurities in the crystal darken, and the more it is irradiated, the darker it gets. I intend to irradiate Metrocity with my brilliance until it shines out as a dark beacon of Evil in the oppressive glare of the Good world! No more shall the propaganda organs of Good claim that Evil never wins, for in my city it shall be seen to win! Heroes shall despair and the wicked shall be inspired all over the world because Metrocity prospers under my rule."

"That's your evil plan, huh?"

"It is, and you should feel privileged. I have articulated it to very few people."

"Oh, I 'preciate it, all right. What I don't unnerstand is this. How many supervillains can there be out there who don't want to destroy the world, don't want to rule the world, jus' want to show the world what Evil can do? You got to be the only one. How coincidental is it that the one supervillain out there who could rule a city without messin' it up is the one who got to do it?"

"You mean aside from my all-around awesomeness? Really, Big Sky, I am beginning to suspect that you are buttering me up to some purpose of your own."

"Well, since you've treated me to your point of view, I might as well return the favor. See, this city also had the most powerful superhero. He was crazy powerful. The rest of us were not in the same league as him, but there was one thing that rankled us about him."

"You mean aside from his insufferable false humility and his maniacal lust for attention?"

"Mister, lemme tell ya, those are the two major occupational hazards in the hero business. Damnear ever'body's got 'em. Naw, what I'm talkin' about is the way he wouldn't take on a trainee. It was like he thought he was gonna live forever. Some of us thought, maybe he was. We don't know anythin' about his species. Maybe in a thousand years he'd still be bangin' villains' heads together when the rest o' us were lines in the history books. But it was you."

"Wait. You're saying that Metro Mahn felt no need to train a replacement for himself because he trusted me not to destroy the city."

"Yep, you and that fish sidekick o' yours. Three o' you go back pretty far, doncha? So he knew you, and he knew what you'd do if you ever ended up in charge. Maybe not the specifics, but the general approach."

"I must remember never to underestimate you, Big Sky. You have a dangerous intellect."

Megamind waited for the hero to thank him for the compliment. Instead, Big Sky paused, grinning, like a man about to drop a bombshell.

"He ain't dead, is he?"

"HOW DID YOU - I mean, where did you get that idea?"

"Got it when you started usin' that Death Ray for power. First time you used it, we all thought it must be some new kinda energy nobody ever heard of before, but when you showed off that big dish you built at the power plant, to catch it an' turn it into juice, I realized it's jus' a big ol' honkin' microwave. Couldn'a made a dent in Metro Man. An' that fake skeleton was jus' the kinda shit he would pull, too. Then when I got snowballed, that clinched it. Not that you couldn'a built somethin' that would stay up there makin' big snowballs an' flingin' 'em that precisely, but that ain't your style. You like showy weapons. Even if you made one that was that stealthy beforehand, it would hit loud, maybe explode or somethin', an' leave some kinda visible damage for people to stare at. What I think is, you got a deal with him. You keep his secret an' he gives you stealth backup."

"His deal is -" Megamind broke off. He stared at Big Sky for a long moment, thinking over just how much more of the truth he should let the hero of Billings know. He finally decided that the answer was none, and that it was time to change the subject to the one he'd originally intended to bring up. "If you've deduced that much, then I presume that you've seen through Cowboy Joe's pretense that your mission was to bring Siligili-Reii to justice for the murder of Pietro Olivetti."

The hero rolled his eyes and made a "Pffft" sound of exasperation. "Mister, the only reason I am on this mission is because of favors. Somebody called in some favors and therefore I had to put up with Cee Jay's bullshit an' give a little nudge or two to his plan so he didn't get any of those foolish kids killed for no good reason. I would not have been happy to turn your four-legged pal over to LIMS, but the truth is that I work for a different arm of the same corporate octopus, an' they got me by the balls damnear as much as they'd have her, so there's a limit to how much sympathy I can have. You may have won this round, but SAMCORP is bigger than all of us put together, an' they'll get her sooner or later."

"Such cynicism in a hero. Next you'll be telling me that it's not Good that wins in the end, it's money."

"I'm a quarter Injun. I know the history of the Injuns on this continent. I know what wins."

Megamind pulled the brainbot lens close to his face so that he appeared to be leaning into it. "If you've done this much research on me, then you know what I do when I'm told I can't possibly win."

"You keep right on goin'"

"That's right." The blue alien let the brainbot drift back to its usual filming position.

"Hey, I'm not opposin' you. I have fulfilled my obligation. I. Am. Done. And if you can keep her outa their hands, more power to you. I'm just warnin' you. You bit off a bigger piece than you ever have before an' it's liable to be more than you can chew."

"Well, then, just to show you I appreciate the warning, Minion will be there within the hour to set you free. And, Big Sky, I know it's not likely, but if you ever start to think about switching sides, the welcome mat is out."

###

TOO HOT! TOO HOT! TOO HOT!

For the first two weeks after the battle, Megamind got tired out enough just by managing the prisoners and the mustering of defenses from his bed that all he wanted to do at the end of the day was sleep, even with Roxanne cuddled up next to him. Then about the time Ferocity was released, (and partly because of that experience, because of the effect of being in the presence of a loving marriage in which one partner was a standard human and the other wasn't, and the possibility that suggested to him) his body began to respond to hers again and making out happened. What followed was a scenario very like the one where the nurse intervened when Roxanne was in the hospital, except that the one intervening was Minion and he knew exactly what was going on.

After some discussion, they had brainbots put an electric sign that said "TOO HOT!" on the wall facing the bed. It was connected to the system that monitored Megamind's vital signs. Most of the time, it stayed dark, but when his heart rate started getting close to what Minion considered a dangerous level, it would start flashing. After that, they had thirty seconds to cool it or the system would alert the fish, automatically powering up his suit if necessary.

The first night it was up, they set it off five times. After that, they worked out what the system's arousal ceiling was and mostly stayed below it. Mostly. The blue man had the idea that, because there was no arousal ceiling for Roxanne, he ought to be able to bring her all the way to climax without setting it off. This turned out to be easier said than done. He was close enough to well that when he had one of her breasts in his mouth, the other in his right hand, while his left massaged her naughty bits just the way she liked and she squealed with enjoyment, he found it very difficult not to set the damned thing off.

"Shit!" she said as she rolled away from him. In the hospital bed, she couldn't roll very far, but she got far enough to be no longer touching him, and that was enough to start bringing down the interpersonal temperature.

"My sentiments exactly," he replied, making himself breathe slowly to calm down. She reached through the bars and fished her phone out of her purse.

"Almost midnight," she said. "Ugh! I have to get to sleep or I'm going to be useless at work tomorrow." The thought of Roxanne going to work - going away from him for any reason - was unerotic enough that the sign shut off.

"If you want to go in the stroke room and finish up, I don't mind," he said while she sat up, found her nightshirt amid the tangled bedclothes, and put it on.

"I'll stay here," she said, lying back until her shoulder and arm touched his. "Once you get well, or sooner if there's breaking news, we won't be able to just spend hours and hours together like this. I can masturbate any time." She curled her hand around his and tipped her head so her cheek lay against his shoulder. His heart swelled.

"Oh, Roxanne, at times like this I wish you did like extravagant presents. I want to cover you in gold and jewelry and furs, just to show the world how wonderful you are."

"You know what I really like."

"Information."

"Uh-huh, especially information you've never told anybody."

"Hmm. Well, that narrows it down somewhat, but it's still a very broad category. Anything in particular?"

"Did you ever teach any of your exes how to say 'I love you' in your original language?"

"Never, and I'll be delighted to teach you, but not now. If I hear those words from your lips now, that damned sign will be blinking all night. In fact, just thinking about it is raising my heart rate. Quick. Give me something unromantic to think about."

"What do you think the League of Heroes is doing now?"

"Well, let's see. They'll have finished debriefing Big Sky and he'll be headed back to Billings, unless the Executive Council has flown him to wherever they're meeting to try to get him to sign on for the next phase of the campaign. If he was at all sincere during our little talk, I rather doubt he'll do it. Not sure about the others. The thing is, when I was holding twelve of them, the League could probably count on help from pretty much anyone they asked. Now that I've released most of them, they'll have to be a little less choosy about who they take. Have to build their strategy around the abilities of their volunteers instead of crafting a strategy first and then assembling a team to enact it, which is to my advantage. Their volunteers are likely to be young heroes who have yet to prove themselves. That's why I think some of the heroes we've just released may sign up again; they'll want to wipe out the humiliation of their initial loss. If I were able to listen in on their meetings with some sort of espionage device, I could be prepared for them, but since they probably won't announce who they're sending against me before they do it, all I can do is be vigilant."

"Think they're going to be doing any espionage against you?"

"Let them try. I spent most of my career working to keep my preparations secret from an opponent who had x-ray vision and super-hearing. I probably have better defenses against espionage than anyone else in the world."

###

Mohenjo Daro's reaction when he first set foot on the streets of Metro City was _Can't believe all the guns. It's like when I did the remake of Gunga Din. Everybody's got a side-arm. But these are loaded, aren't they?_ The crowd parted to give him lots of space, but people weren't panicking. Some were taking his picture. In the distance he heard a child saying "No, Mom, it really is Mohenjo Daro. Look!" He turned a corner and a carriage horse shied downwind from him. He expected horses to shy when they realized he was there, but this was the first one who had ever said "Holy shit!"

"Hey, buddy," the tiger called out. "No, no, don't panic. I'm not gonna hurt you." The horse stood still but looked at him suspiciously, as if he still expected to be pounced on any second. There were a gray-haired woman and two kids in the carriage. The woman had her hand at her belt, on the handle of some kind of weapon. "Can you tell me what you have to do to become a citizen around here?"

###

Cowboy Joe was seriously suspicious of the news he was seeing on the TV in his cell. First, Megamind started releasing the other members of the team. Not normal villain behavior, but a smart tactic if he was really hurt as badly as Joe suspected he was. Then, while he didn't see any interviews with any of them, somebody must have talked to somebody because it seemed like every channel he turned on, there was some ACLU law professor talking about whether there was precedent for counting sentient non-humans as persons under the U.S. and Michigan Constitutions, or somebody at the Ecuadoran embassy saying that Siligili-Reii was not wanted for murder there, or an opinion poll showing that almost half the Metro City population were in favor of nonhuman citizenship and thought the League of Heroes was acting out of its jurisdiction. He had a moment of worry at that - _the blue bastard is corrupting the citizens_ - but then he figured it was all faked, that he was looking at propaganda concocted by the Evil Overlord to undermine his morale.

Keeping this in mind, he didn't really start to worry until his cell was opened up in the middle of the afternoon of the twenty-first day after the battle and he saw, not brainbots with more sandwiches, not his superheroic colleagues setting him free, but two standard humans, both men, in police uniforms.

"Lawrence James Laitenan," said one of them, using the hero's real name. "You are under arrest for attempted kidnapping and conspiracy to engage in the practice of slavery. You have the right to remain silent..."

###

"This is the Evil Overlord, announcing a new category of forbidden activity. Over the next several weeks, I will be working to get back in condition. To that end, I have selected three problematical persons, one of whom I will be hunting through the streets of Metrocity every night from ten p.m. until I get him, which will almost certainly be by four. The first one, presenting the least challenge, is Thomas Kerensky. Minion, put a picture of Mr. Kerensky up on the screen." The blue figure behind the mayoral desk was replaced by a rotating head shot of a weasel-faced, middle-aged, vaguely Eastern European looking man. "He originally came to my attention when he submitted receipts for reimbursement from an organization called Aurora Hospitality, claiming that they were for hotel bills he incurred while visiting his stepson, Hal Stewart, in the hospital. Security videos did not show Mr. Kerensky ever setting foot in the hospital. It turns out that Aurora Hospitality is the company that runs the casino boat that departs every evening from the Seventh Street dock, and dockside records show that he was a reliable passenger. For attempting to swindle me, he will be pursued through the streets every night until I begin to find him too easy to bring down. At that point, I shall move on to John Michael Collins." Another rotating head shot appeared, this one of a young and rather handsome man with straight brown hair and a mustache. "If your memory for crime goes back a few years, you'll remember him: the Southside Rapist, eventually convicted of seven counts, but when he was my fellow prisoner in MCPCG he bragged that the actual number of his victims was thirty-one. Rapists make excellent prey. They have a natural understanding of the predator-prey relationship which lets them know better than to expect mercy. When Mr. Collins begins to bore me, then it will be time to rehydrate the superhero known as Catamount." This time a series of still photos came up, mostly publicity and action shots of Catamount, although Minion had found one of the hero in civvies. "Of the twelve heroes taken prisoner at the end of the attempted kidnapping, he is the only one still in my custody. The reason I have not released him is that it was absolutely impossible to hold a conversation with him. All he did was shout threats at me, the major one being that some Western business entity had decided to fund a defender position for Metrocity and that he was going to be that defender as soon as I was out of the way. That's right, citizens, you were going to have a hero forced on you, not one of your own, but a desert rat from the Southwest who knows nothing of this city's culture and customs. For that and for his unbearable personality, I have chosen him as my most challenging prey. "When I am hunting one of these individuals, it is my will that no bystanders interfere. Anyone helping the prey will become prey in turn. At the same time, I also do not want anyone helping me. The whole point of the hunt is to give myself a good workout, and making things easier for me would defeat the purpose. If you find yourself in the path of the hunt, leave the area if you can, get under cover if you can't, and, I repeat, don't interfere. That is all."


	16. Chapter 16

At the next day's KMCP News Team staff meeting, Roxanne agreed to ask Megamind if he would wear and/or plant on his quarry a GPS tracking device to help the news copter and the pursuit vehicle follow the chase. When she got back to her desk, she had an email telling her that the latest Charlie Winkel Underground cartoon was available. Charlie Winkel was the city's best known political cartoonist; his more respectable work appeared in the city's most popular daily paper. He also produced cartoons that were too extreme in some way for the mainstream press, usually too sexually explicit. These he made available for free on his Underground page. Roxanne was surprised to see that the title of the latest of them was "The Twelve Days of Megamind". Winkel had already done a Megamind-Christmas themed one while she was in the hospital, depicting the Evil Overlord, wearing only his red-and-white cape, receiving the grateful attentions of the female beneficiaries of the weapons giveaway while a small group of male cops looked on, fuming. While she had felt a twinge of resentment, she had mainly felt that it was a skewering that local law enforcement kind of deserved. But this new cartoon turned out to have nothing to do with the giveaway, or with Christmas. There were twelve panels. Each one showed Megamind erotically dominating one of the twelve heroes. Evidence of consent or enjoyment on the part of the heroes ranged from dubious to nonexistent. In the background, a white man in a business suit with a comb-over looked shocked, then horrified, and by the last panel was weeping. Roxanne felt a rush of rage, but her powerful curiosity led her to scroll down to the artist's notes to see who that man was. His name turned out to be one she'd run across in her researches: Henry Ackers, president and CEO of SAMCORP.

###

"So tell the city about your decision to come here and how you did it." Minion was doing the introductory video for Mohenjo Daro. It was going very smoothly, to no one's surprise; the tiger was a veteran interviewee.

"Well, you know I had it pretty nice in L.A. Yeah, I had an owner, but it was more like she was my manager, just like any other actor has. She always looked out for me, saw that I had things the way I liked them, negotiated with studios for me, stuff like that. But Natalie always had one weakness, and that's her mom. I don't know how much of my money went to Alicia Brandt over the years for plastic surgery and sure-fire investment deals that never went anywhere." This was the cover story he, Natalie and Angelus had worked out, with the connivance of Natalie's mother. "Well, the day before I left L.A., I heard her asking Natalie to sign over ten percent of her ownership of me so Alicia could use it as collateral to start a business, cosmetic company or something. I don't think they knew I could hear them. A lot of times, humans don't realize how good my hearing is. Natalie said no, but she said it the way she always tells her mom no at first. Alicia just comes back, keeps asking, and always ends up wearing her down. And I started to worry, because I could see Alicia asking for another ten percent and another ten percent until the next thing you know, she'd have controlling interest, and then, wham, I'd be on the auction block to the highest bidder. So I decided to leave that night. I got into my harness with the pockets and I opened the safe - that's another thing they didn't know I can do - and helped myself to ten thousand marias. And this funny thing occurred to me while I was getting it out. I made this money, I made fifty times this just on my last picture, and this was the first time I ever actually handled any of it. I had to laugh, hearing the news reports say that somebody stole me and stole that money. Never occurred to anybody that maybe I stole myself."

"Wow. So how'd you get here?"

"Well, I also took the GPS out of the Land Rover. Great little device. And I'd use it to figure out where I needed to go and then I'd go out to a rest stop on the interstate and find a truck, something with a solid top. And I'd jump up there and I'd ride all night. Kinda breezy, but better than walking. When it stopped for breakfast, I'd get off and head for the woods, bring down a deer or something. I really got in touch with my ancestors on that trip. Hunt, kill, eat, find a quiet spot on the ground and take a nap, like tigers have been doing for millions of years." In fact, he had been driven in a comfortable van and had eaten meat bought for him by the driver. But he had made it look like he'd escaped from the house on his own because that was part of the cover story, so Natalie could call the cops in the morning and get it on the news.

"So what's next?"

"Asking Natalie to join me. Natalie, this is for you. I'm not mad at you. I miss you. Forget your mom. Forget L.A. Come to Metro City. I'll be checking out real estate here. I'll call you as soon as I get a phone."

###

"I'm sorry to hear about your stepfather." Roxanne and Hal were in front of the courthouse. They had just finished a report on pretrial motions by Cowboy Joe's lawyer.

"Don't be. He's an asshole. I've been telling my mom to divorce him for, like, years. When the brainbots came for him, I wanted to go out and celebrate, but she wouldn't go. Hey, maybe you could celebrate with me."

"Sorry, Hal, but Minion is picking me up in about ten minutes."

"Again? You've been going off to Megamind's secret hideout every night."

"I can't have influence if I'm not there."

"Yeah, but this is, like, he's obsessed. Like he's getting ready to try something with you."

"Well, what if he is?"

"Roxie, you can't mean that. I mean, what if he does something nasty when you turn him down?"

"Hal, drop the subject."

"But what -"

"Now, Hal."

"But you wouldn't, like, really do him, would you?" Roxanne considered slapping him but controlled herself as a new idea came into her mind, an idea that might just put an end to her cameraman's clumsy attempts to, as he put it, try something with her himself.

"Actually, for the good of the city, I would."

"What!? But, Roxie, he's not even human!"

"Hal, you are a brilliant cameraman and I know I'm lucky to work with you, but when it comes to real life, there are times when I just want to say Grow Up. And this is one of them." There was a moment of silence, embarrassed on Hal's part, secretly satisfied on Roxanne's. She had wanted to say that to him for a long time. "Look, the well-being of the city is a big deal. My personal individual purity is not. If this is what it takes, I can do it. Besides," and she allowed herself a small smile. "He's probably pretty inventive."

"Aaaah!" He clutched his head, crushing his red curls with his free hand. "Now I've got that image stuck in my brain. Oh, shit, Roxie."

"Well, if you didn't want to know, you shouldn't have asked." After a moment, she began to feel sorry for him. And, after all, she did have to work with him. "Look, if Megamind went back to his old destructive ways, you might win an award for your coverage of it, but what good would that do if there wasn't a city left at the end of it?"

"You're right," he said. "Fuck, you're right. And it was none of my business." He scuffed the concrete with his sneaker. "I'm sorry."

"That's okay, Hal. And in a way it's actually... kind of good that you brought it up. I mean, if I do end up doing this and it gets out and everybody hates me for it, it's nice to know that there's one person who understands." She managed a smile, the right kind of little concerned smile, and after a moment he smiled back.

"Hey, anybody who hates you for doing this, when you're saving the city by doing it, is just a dumbfuck." She gave him a real smile then.

"Thanks, Hal. It's good to have a friend." He grinned as wide as his mouth could go, big and coarse and clueless. It was the most personal warmth she had ever showed him, and he ate it up.

The actual reason she hadn't done the Evil Overlord yet was that Minion had pronounced his boss fit for horizontal exercise only a few hours ago. Far from performing an act of self-sacrifice for the good of the city, she was looking forward to this in a very personal, selfish way. Hal took her expression of friendship as an invitation to monologue about his difficult childhood. (It really was difficult, but his whiny attitude made it hard to be sympathetic.) Roxanne was relieved when the fanged and spiked car showed up. She still hadn't told Minion, hadn't told anyone in fact, that she knew where the lair was, so she was still treated to the handcuffs and the electronic blindfold. The wire service had already picked up the latest on the Cowboy Joe trial.

Megamind was waiting, fidgeting, checking himself in the mirror every couple of minutes, adjusting the set of his cape and grooming his goatee. He'd been downstairs twice to make sure that everything was perfect in the master bedroom: the black satin sheets on the bed; the three brands of lubricant; the small but well-stocked liquor cabinet in the corner; the cooler containing chunks of fruit for the chocolate fondue, a mixed-seafood cocktail platter and a bottle of champagne; the high-tech fondue pot full of chocolate sauce; the water pipe next to a little rosewood box containing a half-ounce of golden hashish.

The food, booze and hash were Uncle Omar's recommendations. Megamind had confessed to the old crook that he'd never before bedded a good woman and asked for advice as if he were a teenage boy, and Omar was happy to suggest a few things to get her in the mood. In the drawer of the bedside table were condoms in an array of textures, flavors and colors; although disease wasn't an issue for them, they were just close enough genetically that conception might happen, but with more unpleasant results than a typical accidental conception with two human partners. A healthy child of his and Roxanne's could only come about through genetic engineering, but a late-term miscarriage, a stillbirth or a poor deformed creature that only lived a few days could certainly happen by accident. Her reaction when she told him this was to make a doctor's appointment to get back on the pill, but that appointment was still in the future, so he'd ordered a gross of assorted condoms to fill in the gap.

He was on his way back downstairs, having decided to turn the fondue pot on immediately so it would be ready, when he heard the car. Immediately he turned and raced back up, around the stacked cases of supplies, and almost into the path of the car as Minion pulled in. He was at the vehicle's side, next to Roxanne's door, the moment it stopped, racking his brains for the suave, sophisticated greeting he had decided to use, which he had spent an hour and a half choosing and now had completely forgotten. The car door opened, her eyes met his as she swung her legs out, and all he could say was "Roxanne."

"Amnang." It was his real name, which he'd taught her only the previous night. Hearing her say it took his breath away. Then she rose and stepped into his arms for a long kiss. "Hey," she whispered when they came up for air. "We're kissing and we're both standing up."

"Such a novelty." They enjoyed the novelty again, then with arms around each other's waists, strolled downstairs to the bedroom. They ignored all the "get her in the mood" supplies. She was in the mood already. As soon as the door was shut, clothing started hitting the carpet, some of his with a bit of a clunk. By the time they got to the bed, which was a good fifteen minutes, they were both bare-chested and she had stepped out of her shoes. They peeled each other the rest of the way. He already had an erection. She ran the tips of her fingers down its length and heard him gasp. Then he opened the drawer with the condoms and said "Pick one." She ignored all the fancy textures and picked a plain blue superthin, the one that most nearly matched his skin tone. "It's the closest thing to no condom at all," she said. They used three condoms in the next two hours.

They were just settling down into afterglow when Roxanne's stomach made a noise. Then they got up and demolished the seafood cocktail platter, feeding each other the pieces with much licking and other demonstrations of orality. At the end of the meal, they went right back to bed for some condom-free fun. The chocolate sauce got used but not for fondue. Just as they were drifting off to sleep on the sticky sheets, he murmured "I seem to have attained perfect happiness."

Roxanne smiled. "I don't believe in perfect anything in this world, but I will say, that was the best sex I ever had."

"You have made your point, and forced me to revise my definition of perfection upward to allow for my reaction to that lovely bit of flattery."

"Okay. My new goal in life is to keep forcing you to revise your definition of perfect happiness upward forever."

They both slept heavily until Roxanne's alarm (set on her phone) woke them. His first thought when she sat up was that he would simple wrestle her back into bed, inform her that she was kidnapped and therefor unable to go to work, and hold her down, affectionately but firmly, until she agreed. He didn't think she'd be difficult to persuade. When he reached for her, though, he found that he ached all over.

"Temptress, what have you done to me? I can barely move." She turned to him, smiling, and turned back to kiss him.

"Do you mind? Should I go easy on you next time?"

"Uh! Let's hold that question until I've figured out why I feel so awful. This was not my first night of passion by any means, and yet I've never hurt like this afterward."

"Should I go find Minion?"

"You don't have to search for him. Just get my watch from my clothes."

"Give me a minute to get back into mine first. Unless this is an emergency, I'd rather not be naked when he comes in."

"There's a robe for you hanging on the door." There were two robes on the door, both heavy cotton velour. One was black with appliquéd blue satin lightning bolts. The other was a plain, lighter blue which she recognized as the color of her eyes. She put that one on and fished the watch out from among the leather and spikes.

While the fish examined the Overlord, Roxanne took a shower.

"Good news, Ms. Ritchie," he announced as she came back into the bedroom. "It's exactly what I thought it was. After the boss has been laid up long enough to get out of shape, he always overdoes it the first day and ends up like this. An hour in the massager, plenty of fluids, a good breakfast and he'll be fine."

"That's good to hear, Minion." She sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hands around her lover's bare blue ribs. "So, my place tonight?" He frowned. "You don't like my place?"

"Your place is beautiful. It's the security I'm worried about. All those windows. Minion, can we set up holograms to create the illusion that Roxanne is having a quiet and solitary night at home?"

"No problem, sir. We can have everything in place by the time she gets out of work."

"Should I leave you the key?" Roxanne asked.

"We are master criminals," replied Megamind, then switched into a bad fake Spanish accent. "We don't need no stinkin' key."

###

"This is Elaine Ridenow. Welcome to Philosophy in the News, a program of commentary on current events. First up: Megamind's announcement of Metro City citizenship for sentient non-humanoids returns to the news with the granting of citizenship to one of Hollywood's most popular performers: the tiger Mohenjo Daro. With me is Wesley J. Smith, Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and author of _A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement._ Wesley, what is your reaction to Megamind's announcement?"

"Well, Elaine, from my perspective, non-humanoid citizenship may be the most evil thing he's done yet. The killing of individuals, even heroes; the destruction of property; the encouragement of a state of semi-lawlessness in which citizens are forced to fend for themselves against criminals are all damaging to the places where they occur, but this strikes at an idea that is central to liberty and Judeo-Christian civilization: human exceptionalism, the possession by humans of unique dignity regardless of their capacity. By basing citizenship on capacity, on things like sentience and intelligence and the ability to use language, he opens the door to a time when humans will be judged on those things and given or denied rights based on those considerations. Once you decide that human beings don't have ultimate value, anything becomes possible. We reduce people to a state of nature."

"Do you see it as part of a larger trend?"

"Oh, yes. Animal rights and nature rights are beginning to be written into the laws in a few jurisdictions. Personhood has been granted to great apes by the government of Spain, for instance. There are rights for natural biotic communities in the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia and more than twenty cities in North America. This is a direct assault on the unique dignity of human life."

"And is there anything of particular concern to you in this week's announcement granting citizenship to a well-known animal?"

"Mohenjo Daro is widely popular, and people often don't make decisions based on moral reasoning. They are swayed by emotion. The idea that citizenship for this famous tiger ultimately makes citizenship for them, or for their descendants, less secure, is one that seems very abstract to them, and therefore less real than their feelings about this individual right now."

"Thank you, Wesley. And now, for another perspective, I have on the line Peter Singer, Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne and author of many books including the famous 1975 manifesto _Animal Liberation_. Are you there, Peter?"

"Right here, Elaine." Singer's flat, nasal Australian accent was harsh from the long-distance phone connection.

"What is your reaction to Megamind's announcement?"

"Well, first of all, I don't believe for a moment that Megamind was motivated by any sort of moral reasoning. I think the offer of citizenship is, for him, a way of attracting and retaining supporters that costs him nothing. Notice how closely he's controlling the process. Every individual desiring citizenship must appeal to him personally. So this isn't a granting of citizenship to a whole category of non-human persons. This is him making a series of exceptions. However, I think Wesley Smith is right, that the effect on public awareness of his policy will be to move us as a society closer to a time when non-humans, no matter how little they resemble us, are recognized as persons to the extent that they have the characteristics of persons, to a time when we don't take membership in Homo Sapiens or physical resemblance to Homo Sapiens as determinative of moral status, when we look at an individual's characteristics and capacities to determine whether and to what extent that individual is a person. Where we differ is that he thinks it's a bad thing, while I think it offers hope that some day we as a society will cease using animals without regard to those animals' own interests and desires."

"And has the granting of citizenship to Mohenjo Daro in particular pushed us in that direction?

"Mohenjo Daro, like all the talking animal celebrities, has helped to push us in that direction just by being what he is and doing what he does. Millions of his fans all around the world have been made more comfortable with the idea of citizenship and therefore of personhood for animals, and I think that will bear fruit in decades to come."

###

Brainbots began clearing away the rubble of the Metro Man Museum, which had stood in ruins for months. As soon as the ground was cleared, a hologram barrier went up, an illusory dome of constantly shifting images: art from the Gallery, battle scenes, segments of games played by local sports teams, fragments of trials, moments of everyday life in the parks and public squares. Megamind's dirigible was seen for the first time since his rise to power, bringing construction materials through the barrier. Brainbots moved in and out at random intervals. If anyone approached the wall, a brainbot would emerge from it immediately, snapping and glaring.

###

"I need to talk to your boss." Mohenjo Daro and Minion were on the street outside the doughnut shop nearest City Hall, the day after the video went out.

"About what?"

"They froze my assets, Natalie's assets. Justified it by a likelihood that the money would be used for villainy. I need a job." This was the next part of the story. A compliant judge had moved his calendar aside to issue a real court order so that the tiger would have a plausible reason for seeking a closer association with the Evil Overlord.

"What happened to those ten thousand marias?"

"Not gonna last very long. I eat a whole sheep every two days. Besides, the exchange rate's gone nuts."

"I know. We've been following it. The boss thinks the currency markets are gaining more confidence in him as a ruler, but I think Siligili-Reii's old bosses are trying to cause a run-up on the metronero so they can blackmail us later by threatening to crash the city's economy." The fish sighed. For all the improvements in his life and Megamind's that had come with rulership, sometimes he missed the simplicity of underworld life. "Now that I think of it, the L.A. government locking up your money might have something to do with that."

"I have to admit, I don't get this stuff. I'm a tiger. I understand what I live, and right now what I'm living is a serious cash flow problem. Put a word in for me, okay?"

"Sure. I'll mention it next time I see him."

"Thanks, Minion. I won't forget this." Mohenjo Daro strolled away thinking about what it meant to owe a favor to someone he also planned to eat if he got the chance.

###

"Show him." Uncle Alphonse Harville nudged the boy next to him. Perhaps thirteen years old, Edward Clemens was in his full Boy Scout regalia. He held up his right hand with the thumb and forefinger bent a couple of inches apart as if showing the size of something. A thin line of lightning appeared between them.

"Fulgurkinesis," whispered the Evil Overlord, leaning across the mayoral desk. "Fascinating. I believe you are the first person to develop this power in the history of the city."

"I thought it was electrokinesis." It was the first time the boy had spoken; before this, he had let Alphonse, who was the actual great uncle of a neighbor of Edward's family as well as one of Megamind's prison "uncles", do the talking.

"It's a common mistake, but no. Electrokinesis is another word for electrohydrodynamics, a fascinating and useful topic but not anything to do with this little gift of yours. Fulgurkinesis is the proper word for controlling the movement of electricity with the will. Has anyone ever measured what you're doing?" Edward shook his head. The movement distracted him enough that the electricity disappeared. "Then we must do that. You'll come to the Lair and we'll measure what you can do now and set up a system of training so you can develop this power. What do you say?"

"Thanks, Mister Overlord, but the thing is, I'm good."

"Oh, that doesn't matter. You're born and raised here, right?" The boy nodded. "And you're loyal to the city?" He nodded again. "Then your powers should certainly be developed. You can even engage in vigilantism on your own time if you like. Keep the local criminals on their toes. But that's for later. Now you need to know what all you can do. Let me have Minion bring the car."


	17. Chapter 17

Anne Dorzbek, executive director of the Metro City Public Library system, had no idea that her day was going to be anything other than ordinary until she found Megamind in her office, sitting at her desk, looking at her computer. She gasped in shock.

"Good morning, Director. Pardon me for startling you, but your granddaughter did request that I speak with you before making any changes to the main library building." Anne's granddaughter, Susan, was one of the Megaheads who had shouted to warn Megamind and Minion of the attack of the twelve heroes. He had promised each of them a favor. Susan hadn't known what to ask, so Anne had made her suggestion. She had loved the library since she was a child and was very worried about what the Evil Overlord might do to it.

"Yes, Mister Overlord, well, did you know that the main library building is a national treasure?"

"Yes, yes. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I looked it up. But did you know that Wright left plans for a third story? I believe he had intended it to be built when the collection grew large enough to fill it. But then he concluded his commission by cuckolding his patron's son, which is why there was no further Scott family patronage of the library until Wayne's time." He had discovered this tidbit years ago when searching for embarrassing information that might be tied to Metro Man. "Come and look." He gestured and she came around the desk to where she could see the screen of her computer. "Here is the building now." The view started at the front, went all the way around and then up to show the roof. "And here -" he tapped a key and the image changed, "- is the building as it would look with Wright's third story in place." A simulation of the building, enlarged as described, was shown from the same moving viewpoint.

"Is that the only change you're going to make?" she asked nervously.

"That is only the beginning. Thanks to Wright's inability to keep his hands to himself, Metrocity has suffered for decades with the worst-funded public library system of any major city north of the Mason-Dixon line. To rectify that situation, I shall sign one of my patents over to the library's trust fund. It should about double your operating budget for the next eleven years." Anne gasped again, this time in delight. "In return, I am going to insist that the big annex out on the peninsula be opened to the public." The annex, a converted warehouse in the same neighborhood as the lair, was where the bulk of the city's book collection was stored.

"But would anyone go out there?"

"I did. I had very little formal education, you know, and from the time I figured out how to defeat the security system in my boyhood, that annex was my shool. Minion and I have even slept there from time to time, when we were on the run, and it was like a dream of Paradise to wake up surrounded by all those books. I am therefore very attached to the place and I want every child in the city to have available the wonderful experience of roaming free among the stacks, opening any volume that catches their eye."

"Why, you sound like... like one of us." The Evil Overlord's polite smile broadened into a genuine one. The inclusion implied in her comment meant more to him than he was willing to admit; he couldn't hide his pleasure completely.

"Surely you know, Director, that book lovers come from all walks of life. It can't be that surprising. Now let me show you what I have planned for the branch libraries. I want to completely replace that awful little storefront out in East Metro..."

###

"Hey. You reading a script?" That was what it looked like to Mohenjo Daro as he padded into the Evil Overlord's office in City Hall. The blue alien reclined behind the big desk, his eyes on a multi-page document stapled together at one corner, open to roughly the middle.

"Ollo, Mohenjo," said the Overlord, setting it aside. "No, I'm keeping a promise. During the initial approach of the twelve heroes to this building, there were five fangirls who shouted a warning, and that warning might have been what made our defense successful. So I promised them each a favor, and one of them asked only that I read the stories she writes and tell her my reactions."

"Huh." The tiger was familiar with this kind of obligation, but he didn't hear the expected denigration of the writing.

"She any good?"

"Well, for a fifteen-year-old, she's not bad at all. Now, Minion tells me that you're in need of employment and you want me to hire you. What can you do for me that my many inventions cannot?"

"You mean aside from understanding what's going on the way no machine ever could? Yeah, you can make machines or cyborgs that have sharper eyes and ears and maybe noses, that are stronger and stealthier and even can fly. But they've all got to get the word from you if they get into a complicated situation. They haven't lived with humans, dealt with humans, enough to understand humans, anticipate what they'll do, size up a situation and act from their own understanding. And I'll bet none of them are as versatile. I'm a trained actor. I can be all royal and dignified and take control of the situation with sheer authority." He adjusted his stance and the tone of his voice. It was very effective. Then he rolled on his back like a giant kitten. "Or if it looks like the enemy's got a soft heart, I can be lovable and cuddly. Or..." He rolled to his feet and adopted his most menacing look. "...I can be a monster from the lowest pit of Hell." He returned to his ordinary state of feline relaxation.

"And what are you expecting?"

"Well, I need a big advance up front to settle my debts. I found a landlady who's a fan. She's been carrying me, figuring that I'll have money some day. I figure five hundred a month until I pay back the advance, then a thousand. I can be on call most of the time, but I'll want one weekend off a month to go hunting, and two weeks off once a year when the ladies down at the zoo come into season. Nothing unreasonable."

"Not at all."

"So what do you say?"

"You obviously have a lot going for you," replied the blue man. "But it is traditional for overlords to keep people waiting. Therefore I will have an answer for you tomorrow. Did you get that phone you mentioned in your video?"

"Yeah. Minion has my number."

As soon as the tiger had gone, the fish came in.

"What do you think, Sir?"

"I don't trust him. He has a very pleasant set-up in California to go back to. Betraying me would cost him very little."

"So the answer is no?"

"The answer is yes. You know the old saying: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I shall use him for presentation. His presence will enhance my reputation and get me more international attention than ever before. But I won't let him near anything sensitive or depend on him in battle. And I'll certainly be keeping him under invisible surveillance. Nothing he says or does will be unobserved."

###

The first hunt went very well. With GPS transmitters attached to both Megamind's costume and Kerensky's clothing, KMCP News had no trouble following the action, Roxanne in the helicopter, a terrified Hal on the back of a pursuing motorcycle driven by a local motorcycle obstacle course champion. Mohenjo Daro also pursued, keeping close to his new employer and warning away bystanders who had not gotten the word. (One drunk was too out of it to get out of the way even after being warned; the tiger used the scary-looking but harmless pounce he had perfected in his movie work, knocking the man down, then stood over him until the hunt had passed by.) Kerensky, suitably terrified, turned out to be a cunning quarry, good at dodging and the use of cover. Since the Overlord did not allow himself to use the GPS, he was forced to watch for the helicopter to find out where Kerensky was, and it only gave him a good general idea. He also left his ray gun in its holster in favor of an electroshock weapon that forced him to get close. So the hunt progressed in a repeating sequence: an initial sprint would end when the quarry managed to get out of the hunter's sight long enough to find a hiding place; then the hunter would search while the quarry got a little rest; then the hiding place would be discovered and there would be another sprint.

It was a little after three a.m. when a stunned Kerensky was dehydrated and carried back to his jail cell to recover and rest up for the next night's exertions. Roxanne did post-hunt interviews with the tiger and a sweaty Megamind and found her lover's natural musk far more interesting than the commercial scent he wore when he was expecting her. A couple of hours later, she gave him another workout in private. They got to sleep around dawn.

The live show proved particularly popular with Kerensky's fellow gamblers. By the second hunt, the bookmaking was lively, with those who knew him (or claimed they did) putting themselves forward as odds makers. By the third, KMCP's advertising slots for the coverage began to fill up with commercials from tribal casinos, race tracks, Aurora Hospitality and the music of the late Frank Sinatra, beloved of generations of gamblers. The station's upper management was delighted and promised bonuses to everyone involved. The only problem was one that Minion noticed. The helicopter was an almost perfect Faraday cage, so the signal from the transmitter attached to Roxanne's clothing kept cutting in and out. The brainbots would go on alert and notify him every minute or two. He modified their programming so that they would ignore signal cut-outs when she was in the copter.

###

It was Mohenjo Daro's evening custom to call Natalie and have a long rambling conversation full of references to past events and studio gossip. Only someone who'd known them for years could have made sense of it - or spotted the places where it didn't make sense, because those were the places where the code was inserted, the hidden messages that Natalie was to pass along to the League of Heroes. On the evening after that first hunt, an eavesdropper who knew the code might have detected the following message.

The Overlord and RR are fucking

Are you sure? They don't act like it on camera.

Or in person, but they smell like each other, and like sex. The nose knows. Wasn't I right about Brad and Angelina?

###

Everyone was waiting to see what Megamind would do with/to/about the public schools. He spent a few days reading up on them and found a muddle. The schools seemed to have multiple goals - to build citizenship; to prepare students for the job market; to instill a range of values, from racial, religious and lifestyle tolerance to concern for the environment to respect for marriage; to spot hidden disabilities, neglected health problems and domestic abuse; to pressure parents to vaccinate - and a less-than-perfect track record in all of them. The blue alien had a low opinion of school to begin with and after this he was inclined to scrap it all and replace it with something of his own design. But then he dug into the literature on how human children learn and found it just as muddled, full of conflicting theories and false starts. The only thing that seemed consistent across all the theories was that physical health was a major factor. So he made plans to do the two things that seemed likely to be effective. The first was to completely reform school lunches, getting rid of questionable preservatives and everything over-processed and over-refined, replacing them with fresh, whole, nutrient-dense ingredients. This would require a great increase in expense, both for the ingredients and for staff time spent in preparation, but he could afford it. The second was to put the city's network of community clinics right into the schools. He was just putting the finishing touches to this plan, but then he was suddenly too busy and it had to be set aside.

###

Thomas Kerensky had a visitor. It was his wife. She was glad to see him, worried at seeing him so worn down, but above all she had an urgent message.

"A man came to the house," she said. "A lawyer. He said his company bought the mortgage. He said tomorrow the company would start to either call it in or cancel it."

"What do you mean, call it in or cancel it? Aren't those two things opposite?"

"Yeah, that's what he said. If you do what he wants, they'll cancel it and it'll be ours free and clear. If you don't, then they call it in. We'll have to have the whole amount that's still owed, thirty-four thousand eight hundred and twelve metroneros, or they foreclose. And I dunno where we'd get that much money."

"What does he want? What can I do, like this?" He gestured to indicate his surroundings.

"He said you have to make sure Megamind gets to Metro Tower tonight, the side with the TVs in the windows. He doesn't have to go in, just be there outside the building."

Kerensky nodded. "I'll do it. I dunno where the blue bastard will set me loose this time, but I'll head for Metro Tower." He smiled. "Don't worry, baby. Tomorrow night you'll sleep in a house that's all yours."

###

Roxanne was on her way to the helipad when her phone played the first four bars of "Penny Lane", which meant it was from Lucille, Frank's secretary.

"This is Roxanne," she answered.

"Roxanne, listen, Frank had to leave. He had a family emergency, but he told me to tell you that the helicopter is having mechanical troubles. He said there's a backup helicopter waiting for you at the maintenance facility on Twelfth Street."

"Got it. Thanks." Lucille made a second call to the KMCP News helicopter's pilot and camerawoman, telling them that Roxanne had had a family emergency and they should take off without her. Then the secretary hung up, turned the phone off and laid it down on the desk, never to pick it up again. She put on her jacket, got her purse out of her desk, walked past the door to Frank's office, where he was still working, and took the elevator to the ground floor. On the street, she caught a cab to the airport, then a midnight flight to Montreal, where she made a connection to the Cayman Islands, where a bank account in her name contained ten million Cayman Islands dollars. That tiny nation had no extradition treaties with any other country. It was the retirement location of choice for successful criminals throughout the English-speaking world.

###

Roxanne also took a cab. The cabby found the helicopter with no problem. Its blades were already turning and its control panel lights were on. As she crossed the tarmac, the door opened for her. She didn't recognize the pilot, but she figured that he, like the copter, must be a substitute. She had no suspicions until she climbed in, shut the door and found a second stranger behind it, a stranger who obviously expected her to have pepper spray because he was wearing a breathing mask and goggles. She stepped back and the pilot grabbed her arms from behind while the one in the mask pressed a chloroform-soaked rag to her face. She was unconscious in seconds.

###

Kerensky behaved a little differently this time than he usually did when he was rehydrated at the beginning of a hunt. Instead of running off immediately, he took a moment to look around him and especially to look up. Then he headed straight for downtown.

###

"What do you mean, you took off without her?... Lucille told you?..." Frank punched a button on the phone and shouted "Lucille!" When there was no reply, he opened his door and saw the empty desk and coat rack. "What the hell is going on around here?!"

###

Minion was following the hunt in the Overlord's car when he heard the particular beep that signaled a distant brainbot alarm. He pulled over to the curb and turned on the dashboard-mounted monitor. The first thing he saw was a map.

###

The middle-aged swindler had never run like this before. He wasn't dodging or going to ground. He was just running flat out. At first, he headed down Clemeceau toward the park, but just before the entrance he swung left and sprinted ten blocks down Tyler. At this hour, there was no traffic in the central business district and he was able to cross intersections without slowing down. It was all the blue alien could do to keep up with him. Then as he passed Metro Tower, he seemed to run out of steam, slowing to a stop, leaning against the building with his lungs working hard. The Overlord crossed the intersection with his electroshock device at the ready.

Suddenly the televisions in the store windows, dark and silent a moment ago, blazed to life. They showed an ordinary-looking middle-aged businessman with a comb-over, no style at all, but his role in the game was obvious in a moment.

"Hey, Megamind," he said. He had a slight Western twang. The blue man was so startled that he stopped in the middle of the street. The motorcycle rolled up behind him, Hal riding with the back of the driver's shirt clutched in one fist while the other arm held his camera up. "This is Hank Ackers. You've got somethin' of mine and now," he paused for effect with a gloating grin as Mohenjo Daro leaped out of the shadows and sat on Kerensky, who'd been trying to sneak away. "I've got somethin' of yours."

The picture on the screens switched to an overhead view looking down at open water. In the middle of the screen was what appeared to be a white raft. On it was a blanket and on that blanket was Roxanne. The camera moved closer, revealing that she was unconscious and that the 'raft' was a block of ice. "Now, that ice cube she's layin' on's not too stable. A big wave from a passin' ship might sweep her right off into the lake, and it's gettin' cold this time of year. Or it might just be exposure that gets her. So if I were you, I'd make it quick. Bring Siligili-Reii out to the Abu Yaseed and we'll tell you where she is. Don't keep us waitin'." The screen went blank.

Megamind felt like his heart was being torn out of his chest. In an instant he understood, as he never had before, the torment he'd inflicted on her loved ones over the years, showing her to them helpless on an impersonal screen. Then he was angry, wanting to rip Ackers limb from limb and feed the parts to his alligators. He wanted action! Looking around for Minion, he spotted Hal, aiming the camera right at him.

"You," he shouted. "Did you get that?" Hal released the driver's shirt to give the 'thumbs up' gesture. "Then get this, and send it out to the world. I, Megamind, Overlord of Metrocity, renounce evil. I shall rescue Roxanne Ritchi no matter what the cost, and bring Henry Ackers and all who connive with him to justice!"


	18. Chapter 18

Roxanne's long experience as a damsel in distress had taught her a few things. One of them was to pretend to still be unconscious for a little while after she woke up, to assess the situation as well as she could before the villain knew she was awake. So she lay still, noticing the cold breeze, the smell of fresh water, the sound of small waves and the movement of the surface she was lying on. A small open boat, she figured, or a raft, close to the surface, probably of Lake Michigan. She heard the typical kind of motor that such boats have, idling, but she didn't feel the motor's vibrations, so there must be two of them. There was also the sound of a helicopter in the air and the insides of her eyelids were lit red with the glare of a search light. The light was equal on both eyes and it didn't move, so the copter must be hovering directly above her. Then she remembered her abduction. Chloroform? Didn't these villains know it could give a victim a heart attack? Or maybe they didn't care about that. The thought chilled her even more than the chilly breeze.

She opened her eyes. The helicopter and the search light were just where she expected. The surface she was lying on was open and flat, only about ten feet square, with no railing at all, white and strangely translucent. Directly under her was a blanket that had been spread out on the surface like a picnic blanket. The motor she heard was that of an inflatable boat with one person in it, that slowly circled her, clockwise. The person, lit by the reflection of the search light on the surface around her, was one of the heroes who had been part of the attack on City Hall. He was wearing a jet pack over his costume, but it wasn't fired up. It took a moment before she recognized him: Der Kleiner Bar, defender-in-training of Berne, Switzerland. So now she knew who was behind this abduction. She turned her attention back to the surface she was on. White and translucent? Couldn't be. Must be some kind of optical illusion. She rolled over, reached for the edge of the blanket and felt beyond it.

Sure enough. Ice. She was on an ice floe. It was a menace of the most outdated sort, the kind of thing that was done in the days when heroes arrived on horseback and carried smelling salts to revive heroines who had fainted, not so much from the shock of their abduction experiences as from their corsets being too tight. What's more, it was the wrong time of year for natural ice. That and the perfect rectangular shape told her that this was manufactured ice that someone had taken the trouble to buy or steal and tow out here just to leave her on it. Roxanne, like many experienced damsels, was opinionated and critical when it came to villain style, and this ice floe thing just struck her as beneath contempt, not to mention seriously uncomfortable. She sat up and wrapped the blanket around herself. It, at least, seemed to be up to date, made of some kind of high quality synthetic fiber, warm even though it was damp. The sky was cloudy and the shore was beyond the horizon, although there was a glow reflecting off the clouds to her left that suggested a city. If that was Metro City, then she was roughly northwest of it, which would confirm her being on Lake Michigan. To the right, a few distant moving lights confirmed the location of the shipping lane. There was one distant light that didn't move. She figured it must be a buoy or a lighthouse or something. Her watch was gone. So was her purse. Inside the blanket, she felt along the seam of her bra where the transmitter had been sewn in. Gone. Was the hunt still going on? Did anyone in Metro City know she was out here?

###

Minion and Megamind were in the car, planning, when the fish got a phone call.

"Minion, this is Frank Bonnin."

"Roxanne's boss, right?"

"Yeah. Listen-"

"First, Mister Bonnin, would you step over to a window?"

"Why?"

"We've figured out that this abduction could only have happened if Roxanne was misled by someone inside KMCP News, or someone who pretended they were. So what I want you to do is go over to the window and stand there as you talk and I'll have a brainbot fly up to the outside of the building and film you in real time so we can confirm that it's really you calling."

"That makes sense... Okay. I'm at the window."

"And the brainbot is on the way in just seven... six... five... four... three... two... one... there. Do you see it?" The dashboard monitor suddenly showed the grey-haired manager, familiar to both aliens from years of surveillance of Roxanne. With an old newscaster's instinct, he straightened up and looked into the lens.

"Now I'm putting it on speaker so the boss can hear this."

"Ollo, Mr. Bonnin. I presume this is about the rescue."

"It is. I pulled a couple of favors with my contacts in the Coast Guard. They're willing to work with the local police and fire departments, and with you, in doing a search-and-rescue for her."

"The search is not necessary. We know where she is."

"You do?"

"We had two stealth-equipped brainbots trailing the Abu Yaseed's helicopter, in which she was abducted. It is from that aircraft that the video of her on the ice floe was just taken. She is also being guarded, and there is no reason to expect that the guarding has anything to do with her safety. It could be that they have orders to drown her as soon as any rescue is attempted."

"Oh, Jesus."

"So any approach at all must be conducted with absolute stealth until the moment we free her. Backup will be appreciated, however, especially in dealing with the crew of the Abu Yaseed..."

###

The Gulon waited under the ice. Like the other American heroes who had been freed from Megamind's custody, he had been offered a generous amount of money by SAMCORP to stay on for the next phase of the operation. Unlike the others, he had accepted. But it wasn't about the money. The Gulon had taken his name from a creature in a Scandinavian folk tale, famous for its enormous appetite. He was a mutant, born with a pocket universe inside his expandable body. With an act of will, he could create an opening to that pocket universe at any point along his skin. The opening could widen enough to take in anything up to about a quarter mile in diameter, and after it closed, he would return to his normal size and weight. He had once walked around with a house-sized boulder in there for a week, and he felt it so little he almost forgot it was there. Time passed very slowly in there, roughly at the rate of five seconds internal for every two days external. It was of enormous help in rescuing people injured in the national forest a long way from medical help; he could engulf the patient, walk unhurriedly to the emergency room in the nearest city, and disgorge them in the presence of a medical team with their injuries still fresh.

It had also been of great use in apprehending criminals. Bringing in Siligili-Reii had been his intended role in the attack. However, it turned out that she had some way of forcing it shut. Three times he had nearly had her and every time, just as she noticed him, it acted against his will, closing, it seemed, of its own accord. He had spend a lot of time since then thinking about it. She must know what he had and how to counteract it. She might know more about it than he did. He didn't know what her trick was, but he wanted her out of Megamind's hands before the blue genius figured how to duplicate that trick and make it available to every villain who might ever encounter him. Only that would preserve his effectiveness as a hero.

The ice block on which Roxanne rested had been hollowed out underneath. A little of what that hollow contained was four jets, one on each side, and a computer that controlled them, keeping the ice in one place in the constantly moving water. The rest of it was a superinsulated hiding place, sealed off from the waters of the lake with a double door that was opaque to light, heat and sound (including SONAR). He was kept connected to the outside world with a few little lenses and microphones on the outside of the block, small enough to be mistaken for gravel embedded in the ice, and by radio contact with the rest of the team. Just as Der Kleiner Bar waited for attacks on the surface, just as the two human SAMCORP security men in the copter waited for attacks from the air, he waited for an attack from under the water.

###

Roxanne wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting on the ice when the bucket was lowered from the helicopter. It settled almost exactly in front of her and contained a paper cup of coffee with the usual plastic "sippy cup" lid. It was instant, but just the way she liked it, and in this situation it was the nectar of the gods. She was on her third sip when she wondered how the people in the copter knew how she took her coffee.

Lucille. When a meeting ran long, Frank would send Lucille out for coffee and she knew how everyone took theirs. Roxanne had gotten onto a different helicopter than usual on Lucille's instruction. Lucille was the traitor. The bucket was pulled back up, out of sight. Then the search light shifted a little to her right. She could see the bucket coming down again, this time directly over the path of the inflatable, which pulled up and stopped right under it.

As if that was the signal, the air was suddenly full of brainbots and electric guitar music. She heard a swish and a clank behind her, on the opposite side of the floe from the inflatable. Turning around, she saw a submarine, painted to resemble a muskellunge, with its hatch open and Megamind standing in it, waist deep, holding out his arms to her.

###

The Gulon was bored. The radio chatter was mostly the two Swiss heroes talking in their own version of German, apparently about soccer, which he didn't follow. There was nothing visible that even suggested trouble. Then the copter moved a little and the light with it. Suddenly there was more and bluer light.

His radio squawked. "Fuck, there's a bazillion brainbots out there," said the helicopter pilot. "I can't see the water. Bar, Gulon, you seeing anything?" One of his screens showed what seemed to be the scaly side of a fish, but no fish would just suddenly park itself alongside a camera lens like that.

"Yeah, got something on the north side," her reported. "I'm going out there." He pulled down his breathing mask, slid the doors open, and pushed himself out, flinching as the cold water hit him.

###

Hank Ackers was a CEO and CEOs didn't usually put in an appearance where there was dirty and/or dangerous work being done. But Hank thought like a sports team owner and that meant he wanted to be there in person, in the owner's box so to speak, when a big win was expected, to savor the glory. And he didn't see how this could be anything but a big win. Hank subscribed to the theory that, while a good person's weakness is the little bit of bad in them (because it leaves them vulnerable to blackmail), a bad person's weakness is the little bit of good in them. Megamind's weakness was that he cared. He was not in the mining business and had no self-interested reason to fly around a quarter of the Earth's diameter to take Siligili-Reii away from SAMCORP, so he had to have done it because he cared about her, because she was a fellow space alien and he felt sympathy. Once Hank found out that he also cared about Roxanne Ritchi, it was pretty simple to set up this kidnapping scheme. As long as he had either Roxanne or Siligili-Reii, Megamind wouldn't dare use any really effective weaponry, and Hank would be out of his reach before it was time to send his walking geology lab off with her new handler to make SAMCORP some more money. She would take more watching now, armed guards at all times, and that would be expensive, but it would be worth it just to know he thwarted Megamind. So he was delighted but not real surprised to hear that a police boat was on the way, bringing Megamind and Siligili-Reii.

He came out on deck to watch the small boat approach, grinning as wide as his mouth would go. The Abu Yaseed's floodlights illumiated the lake around it as it came alongside. A man stood by with the rope ladder, but Hank, standing at the railing between his assistant and the translator they'd brought along to communicate with the crew, waved him off with a frown. Siligili-Reii couldn't use ladders designed for humans. They'd have to bring her up with the cargo crane, and there'd probably be some verbal back-and-forth first. The policeman who had piloted the boat was picking up a bullhorn.

"This is the Metro City Police. Everyone aboard this boat is under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used..." Hank missed the rest because the two apparent aliens took hold of their wrists, turned into blue blurs and then into human police officers. He was absolutely flabbergasted. In his experience, the police were part of the Establishment, as he was, and could be relied on to side with him against any and all outsiders, no matter what the letter of the law was. It was how things worked in the high desert and how he figured it worked everywhere. He didn't figure he'd even need to ask.

"Why should I believe you?" he shouted. "How do we know this isn't one of Megamind's tricks?"

"If you don't believe us, how about them out there?" The one with the bullhorn gestured toward the sea lane, where one set of lights was coming toward them. The Djiboutian captain looked at it through binoculars, then handed them to Ackers, speaking in French.

"He says it looks official," said the translator. Ackers took the binoculars and trained them on the moving lights. A Coast Guard patrol boat was on its way. The cop with the bullhorn started the Miranda recitation again from the beginning. Ackers go his phone out and hit the speed dial for his lawyer.

###

She wanted to run to him, but in street shoes on melting ice, it wasn't happening. She stood up carefully, took two steps, and then saw him look past her, his expression turning serious, and grab for his ray gun. Before he could draw, the hero in the jet pack grabbed her from behind and pulled her into the air. Megamind raised the gun, started to aim, but the submarine was suddenly moving in the other direction. He leaped out and the ice cleats he'd worn over his boots gave him good footing on the floe.

Behind him, the submarine tipped forward so that its tail rose out of the water, a maneuver it could not execute on its own, and sank. He watched it out of the corner of his eye while keeping most of his attention on Der Kleiner Bar and Roxanne. A dozen brainbots surrounded them, grabbing on with their metal graspers, but the hero clutched her to him and made the jet pack spin them in the air, shaking the little cyborgs off. Then he put one fist straight out in front of him and roared away at full speed. They were following the helicopter, which was headed away from Metro City, out over the water. It was the quickest way out of the city government's jurisdiction, and the quickest way to get around the curve of the Earth so as to be out of range of the Death Ray. It was just what Megamind had expected them to do if they got a chance to flee.

"Minion," he said, speaking into his watch. "What happened to the sub?"

"The Gulon got it, Sir," the fish replied. "And the lakebots got him." Six invisible lakebots had accompanied the submarine. "They're bringing him up to the surface now." Even as Minion spoke, the Gulon's head broke the surface. The lakebots were no longer invisible, and their lights showed that they had the hero's arms and legs restrained.

"Good. Have them haul him to the police dock. Brainbots!" Megamind lowered his left arm and walked to the center of the ice floe. "Power assist!" The nearest one flew down, extruding a cord from its underside, which it plugged into the handle of the ray gun. A second came down and plugged its cord into the back of the first. Others followed the lead of those two, forming a kind of electrical daisy chain, like some kind of perverse cyborg orgy, an similarity made stronger by the fact that, once plugged in, they ceased to fly, lying on the ice in an expanding coil. While they did this, Megamind spoke into his watch.

"Minion, is the _Bowfin_ out there?" The Coast Guard commander had ordered the _USCGC Bowfin_ to be waiting along the kidnappers' expected escape route, just east of the sea lane so as not to call attention to itself.

"I'll patch you through to Captain Morris, Sir," replied the fish.

After a moment, a male human voice came through on the watch. "Can you hear me, Megamind?"

"Quite well, Captain. Do you see them?" A crowd of projection bots was following the helicopter, illuminating its flight.

"We do, and they're heading right this way."

"Good. Let me know when they're close enough for a quick rescue." By now the brainbots were stacked three deep around him on the ice. "Let me ask them to surrender first," said the captain. "By all means." There was a long pause while Megamind reset the ray gun to "Deregulate" and crouched on one knee, taking its handle in both hands and resting his arms on the top row of brainbots.

Deregulate was the setting that would short out the voltage regulators in electrical devices, including the electrical systems of vehicles. The battery in the ray gun was only big enough to make it effective over a very short range, but that hadn't been a problem in the past because he had used it mostly to stop vehicles that were pursuing him, so all he had to do was tell Minion to slow down. He had developed this power assist procedure to tap the batteries in a chain of brainbots to give him extra range.

Even so, he wasn't sure it would be enough. The helicopter was very tiny with distance now, and the two riding the jet pack were hardly visible. He took careful aim. Then he realized that they were descending.

"They're doing it," said the captain. "You can stand down."

"Excellent," he replied. "See you back in Metrocity." He stood up. "Brainbots, off power assist. Take me to the Doom Cruiser." The coil around him lifted into the air, two of them lifting him with it. A door opened about thirty feet up. The brainbots set him in the cabin of the Doom Cruiser. He immediately switched off the stealth mode. It wasn't really necessary, but he wanted it visible for his triumphant return to the city.


	19. Chapter 19

The board of directors of SAMCORP met in emergency session the next day. Acting under the "gross criminal malfeasance" clause of Henry Ackers' employment contract, they voted to remove him from both his positions with the company, eject him from the board, strip him of his pension and severance bonus, and initiate a lawsuit against him for using company resources for criminal activity. They also released a public statement announcing that the company's long exploitation of Siligili-Reii was entirely the doing of Ackers and the late Pietro Olivetti, who had concealed her possession of full human-level language skills and thus her personhood under the International Convention on Extraterrestrials, and renounced any claim of ownership of her. They expressed the hope that she would be willing to work with the company as a contractor in the future. They also, more quietly, notified the mayor of Metro City that they would still be willing to fund a defender position there in the event that Megamind stepped down as Overlord.

The Executive Council of the North American League of Heroes issued a statement announcing that, in the matter of Siligili-Reii, their help had been fraudulently obtained and they would be taking no further action against Megamind as long as he remained on the side of good.

###

Omar Jenkins was finishing up some bookkeeping. He now lived upstairs from his business, the East Metro Pistol Club and Range, and when he couldn't sleep, he would often come downstairs to do paperwork. It was time-consuming because he did it the old-fashioned way, writing with a ball-point pen in green-bound ledger books.

He was closing up the current book when he heard footsteps. Nobody but him had any business being there. Omar had left his main gun upstairs, but he had extras all over the building. Now he quietly opened a drawer and pulled out his office gun. Without closing it, he got up and stepped soundlessly to his office door, which was open. The footsteps were coming from the right, from the direction of the back door. In a single motion, he stepped out and swung the pistol up so that he was looking straight down the sights at -

"Li'l Blue," he said, lowering his arm. "You ought to knock."

"Sorry," said the no-longer-evil Overlord. "I just wanted to make sure I wasn't interrupting anything."

"Boy, at my age, if you had interrupted anything, it would have been a nap, and then I'd'a been grateful to you for wakin' me up before I slep' all night in my chair and woke up with a crick in my neck. C'mon in." He led the way back into the office, where he put the gun away, got out a bottle and two glasses.

"Are you angry with me, Uncle Omar?" the blue man asked as Jenkins poured.

"I was for about five minutes there," the old man said as he handed the Overlord his drink. "Then, I'll tell you what happened. Back in the day, I had a lot of enemies, but the one that turned out to be my worst enemy was this white kid, fresh outa college, workin' as a reporter with Channel Eight, name of Frank Bonnin. He was jus' determined to take me out and make a name for hisself. I leaned on him, I ordered hits on him, I did everythin' I could to that boy, and it jus' didn't do me no good at all. It was him, more than anybody else, that was responsible for gettin' me put away. Over the years, I mellowed out to the point where I wasn't out for his blood anymore, but if I ever met ol' Frank Bonnin face to face, I sure wasn't about to shake his hand, and I'm pretty sure it was mutual. Then, there I was, right after you made your whole I-renounce-evil announcement on live TV, and this phone call comes. And who is it callin' but Frank fuckin' Bonnin. He had these buddies in the Coast Guard who said they would work with you, to find Miss Ritchi, and he wanted your number, so he called me. Only for Miss Ritchi would he have broke down and called me. And you know what? I gave it to him. Only for her would I have done that. So, you see, I understand. Roxanne Ritchi is not like other women. She is not even like other beautiful women. She is in a class by herself as far as the effect she has on men. So I understand you turnin' good for her. If I was your age, I mighta done it myself. How is she, by the way?"

"She spent a night in the hospital for hypothermia, but she's fine now. We had a long talk."

"You propose?"

"I did and she accepted, but she wants the engagement kept a secret for now so it won't influence the election."

"What? Blue, the election is a foregone conclusion. The Democrats are gonna run that asshole Crawford again, and he's gonna go down in flames again. What influ-"

"Not the mayoral election, Uncle. My election." Omar just looked at him oddly. "If I'm good now, I can't be the Evil Overlord, but it would be a very bad thing for the city if I were to just step down. Metrocity needs a protector of some sort. So Roxanne suggested that I offer the citizens a choice. Do they want me to continue as a kind of constitutional monarch or would they rather have that awful Catamount fellow as the city's hero?"

"You really gonna run, like campaign?"

"I certainly am. When I made my victorious return to the city, after Roxanne was saved, I expected little groups of my fans to turn out and cheer me. Instead, there were hundreds of citizens doing it! Maybe thousands! I tell you, Uncle Omar, it was just ex-hill-arating! Now I want to be a public fig-oor. I want to give speeches and hand out awards. I-"

"You wanna get yourself assassinated, is that it?"

"Already thought of that. May I use your chair for a demonstration?"

"Jus' don't damage it none. I got that chair all broke in the way I like it." Megamind pulled out his ray gun, dehydrated Omar's swivel chair, and put the cube into the pocket under his spiked shoulder guard.

"Come," he said, "and bring your gun." The Overlord turned to go.

"Li'l Blue, if you're headed for the range, you ought to leave the drink here."

"You're right. What I need is water." The blue man stopped in the men's room for a paper cup of water, then took it down to the target end of the range and rehydrated the chair. He pulled off his spiked leather shoulder guard and set it on the chair's back. Then he set the empty cup inside the collar. "Now", he said as he led the way back to the firing line. "I want you to go for a head shot."

In spite of his frequent complaints about his fading abilities, Omar was still a crack shot. He aimed and fired with confidence that the cup would be sent flying. He was astonished when, instead, the bullet seemed to stop in the air just before it would have hit the cup, then fell, bounced off the clasp of the shoulder guard and landed on the chair seat.

"Ho-lee shit! You jus' invent that?"

"Actually, I invented it when I was a boy. You must remember that helmet. I made it over-powered because I wanted it to throw off a lot of impressive sparks, and it ended up throwing projectiles back with a considerable multiple of the force they came in with. The result was that the Warden got a dodge ball in the back of the head and I got a time-out in the corner. I have since learned that sometimes subtlety is better. Every one of my costumes has one of these force field generators built into it. The only thing it won't stop is one of Metro Mahn's punches." The blue alien started walking back downrange.

"You hear from him lately?"

"Oh, that's what I came to tell you! He's been giving me pointers on getting things done with money instead of intimidation and I've tried making a few strategic campaign contributions. Earlier today, I've gotten the word that it's working." He reached the chair, picked up the shoulder guard and fitted it back on as he spoke. "You're going to be getting a pardon from the governor and a special exception from the mayor's office to allow you to keep this business even after I am no longer Overlord. How does this look?"

"Thank you, Li'l Blue. It means a lot. You look fine." Megamind pulled out his ray gun. "Li'l Blue, before you do that, I..." Omar seldom hesitated to speak, but now he felt childish. It was a childish request, but he figured that now would be the time to ask, if there ever was one. "I always wanted to try that ray gun of yours."

The blue man grinned broadly. "Of course, Uncle Omar." He walked back to the firing line, made sure it was still set to Dehydrate, and handed it to Omar. The old man hefted it.

"Doesn't weigh much."

"And the ray isn't affected by gravity at all, so you don't need to allow for that."

"At this distance, it wouldn't matter anyway."

"I know, but the time might come when you need to use it for real."

"I'll remember, then." He turned to the target, aimed and fired. The chair and the paper cup became one cube.

Back in the office, they picked up their drinks again.

"All right, so you gonna give speeches, you gonna try to get yourself elected, an' then if you win, you gonna accept some restrictions, right? LIke no more huntin' people you don't like through the streets?"

"In fact, I had a rather unusual email just recently from the Metro City Leather Association, which is not, as I'd first thought, a trade group for tanners and leather workers. Instead, it's a kind of sadomasochistic dating club and political pressure group, agitating to eliminate the laws against their kinky practices and helping masochists and sadists to find each other. It seems that there are five members of the club who are very turned on by the idea of being hunted through the streets. Two of them would happily be TASEd at the end of it, but the other three would rather be wrestled to the ground, hog-tied and carted away still conscious."

Omar had started to chuckle at the word "happily". By the time Megamind finished, he was laughing so hard that he had to set his drink down to keep from spilling it. Megamind found himself joining in.

"Okay," the old man said when they got their breath back. "So all that'll really change, if you win, is that you'll have to get permission for some of the shit you do. What if you don't win? What are you gonna do?"

"Besides take Roxanne on the best honeymoon in history? Well, I've been toying with the idea of becoming, believe it or not, a real estate developer. Every one of my buildings has proven extremely popular, and if I bought and sold the properties myself, I would have complete creative freedom. I would also continue to work with young Edward. His power is developing very rapidly. He may yet become a true lightning master, and if he doesn't, I shall fit him out with equipment that will give him powers adequate to the defense of the city even with the level of fulgurkinesis that he has now. I think, no matter who is protecting the city a year from now, he will certainly be defender-in-training. Lastly, I do want to find the remains of Siligili-Reii's starship. Faster-than-light travel remains as much a mystery to me as much as to human scientists. I want to remedy that. If I have a formerly functioning starship, her ability to figure out what minerals went into it, and my own great brain to put them together, I believe I can make Earth an interstellar civilization and this city its first interstellar spaceport."

"Whoa! You thinkin' way ahead! But didn't you once say you'd get bored with nobody to fight?"

"I did, but it's different when Rox- when people actually get hurt. Metro Mahn and I were both very careful not to let harm come to anyone, but most villains are not so considerate. And, with the exception of checking Roxanne into a maternity ward, I would feel quite content never to set foot in a hospital again."

"So you're gonna do the whole family thing? Is that even possible?"

"With a little artful genetic engineering, yes. We're thinking in about five years, if things are stable."

###

The four heroes and seven human SAMCORP employees involved in the kidnapping of Roxanne Ritchi were charged in federal court. The Djiboutian crew of the Abu Yaseed were held overnight and then released when interpreters discovered that not one of them even knew that a kidnapping had taken place.

###

The Gulon's imprisonment was far less hard on him than he was on himself. He'd actually worked for an evil person! Doing evil things! And on some level, he'd known it. On some level that wasn't making the decisions, he had known that Ackers' explanation was flawed, that an evil thing like a kidnapping could never result in good in the end. He wouldn't be surprised if the League of Heroes forced him out and gave someone else his defender-in-training position. He didn't deserve to be a hero. He would go back to being what he was: a freak with a horrible, grotesque, freaky body that didn't belong in decent human society. He was nineteen and his life was over.

On the advice of his lawyer, he revealed none of these thoughts to the court, the press, or anyone who was in touch with him from the outside.

###

"The citizens don't vote for their defender! They get a defender or they don't, and if they don't, they're screwed, so they don't argue."

Big Sky rolled his eyes. Megamind had asked him to bring Catamount up to speed, and had brought the dehydrated hero to Montana in his invisible jet along with a DVD of the televised parts of the story. They'd watched it in Big Sky's living room. He'd been gratified to see that Catamount had the right reaction when he saw Roxanne on the ice floe, palming his face and muttering "I don't believe that asshole," but since then it had all been downhill.

"Metro City is not like any other place on Earth," he said patiently. "And they're in a situation like none other on Earth. You know how long it's been since an Evil Overlord turned good while he was in power? 'Bout eleven hunnerd years, and that one turned out so good that he got the reputation of a livin' saint. And saints were big business back then. Religious pilgrimage was the tourism of the Middle Ages. Now, Megamind's no saint and he's never gonna be one, that much is pretty obvious, but he is a helluva tourist draw. The way he's filled up the streets with talkin' animals and those brainbots o' his, and done all those strange things to the public buildin's, tourism is almost back up to what it was in Metro Man's day, and now that he's good, it'll prob'ly get even bigger, 'cause they'll get the people who were too afraid to come when he was evil. He did all this with less of a draw on the public till than what it used to cost to clean up after his battles with Metro Man, and as Overlord, he defends the city for free. SAMCORP will only put you in as defender if he steps down, which he pretty obviously does not want to do, but as an act of goodness, he's willin' to leave it up to the citizens. That's what you're up against, boy." Big Sky was only five years older than Catamount, but as a city defender speaking to an associated hero (i.e., a member of an association of heroes who is not attached to any particular city or other government entity), he automatically spoke in the tone of an uncle or a much older brother.

Catamount hung his head, his lips pursed in chagrin, and Big Sky had hope that he was getting through to the younger hero. Then Catamount looked up, his eyes unfocused, thinking. And that worried Big Sky because he was already familiar with the kinds of ideas Catamount tended to come up with.

"What if I challenge him to single combat? Yeah, wrestling! See how he does with that!"

"Boy, if you revive an old tradition like that, you gotta stick with all of it, not just the parts that are to your advantage. The challenger only issues the challenge. The challengee chooses the means, and you know what he's gonna do is choose some kinda equipment you never used before and he uses all the time. So think again." Then, feeling that Catamount had already done enough thinking, he said "Look, I unnerstand. Cee Jay has kep' you from bein' placed with a city a long time after he should have and it's made you bitter. But there's no way Cee Jay's gonna hang on as co-ordinator of the DSJA now he's under indictment. It'll prob'ly be either La Niña or Mornin'star that gets the job. Wait 'n' see what the new co-ordinator has to say."

Big Sky watched the younger hero's face, where resentment changed to perplexity, then frustration and then back to resentment.

"What if it was you?" Catamount responded. "What if you were forced out of here and Metro City might be your only chance? What would you do?" This was extremely unlikely. Big Sky was a hometown boy, as well established as any hero anywhere, but he chose to pass over that, since it wasn't relevant to Catamount's question.

"What I'd do is see about cuttin' a deal with the blue guy. See, right now Metro City is bein' defended jus' fine, but who's he got for backup? So far as is generally known, all he's got is a sidekick who's so allergic to the public eye that all he goes by is Minion. From that alone, I judge that he don't want to be overlord or defender or anythin' else in his own right. He might do it if he had to, but if someone else took the successor role away from him, I doubt he'd complain a bit. Then Megamind mentioned to me when he dropped you off that he's found this local boy who's a potential lightnin' master. This boy might be a helluva hero someday, but he's thirteen years old and right now he's less lightnin' master than lightnin' bug. Another thing we know about Megamind is that his pockets are real deep. He might be willin' to fund an assistant position jus' on his own, especially for a traditional hero whose powers are physical, because that's somethin' his city hasn't got right now. But here's the problem for you with an approach like that. When Megamind had me in his lockup, I was civil to him, so he'd consider me. To hear him tell it, all you did was mouth off, and I see no reason to disbelieve him. That's been your problem all along. You're damn' good in a fight, but you shoot your mouth off without thinkin'. Boy, in Ethical Causality they got a concept they call the Test o' Weakness. It's where, if you got a big weakness, the time will come when your future, an' maybe the future o' everythin' you care about, depends on whether you overcome that weakness. Looks to me like that's where you are right now. Either you control your mouth an' make nice to the people o' Metro City so they choose you for their defender, or you control your mouth an' make nice to Megamind so he lets you in without an election, or you go back out West an' wait for the new co-ordinator to decide what to do with you. Those are your choices."

It took a moment for this to sink in. Then Catamount's face fell. He put his head in his hands.

"Sweet Jesus help me," he muttered.

"I hope He does, boy. I hope He does. Listen, here's what I would do next. Go back to Metro City incognito-like. Walk around. Get to know the place. Talk to the people. Find out what they're like. See if you can stand it. Then go talk to Megamind. Find out what he's like now that he's good. I would say you should be there a couple of weeks, minimum. Then you can make a more informed decision."


	20. Chapter 20

In a brief ceremony on the steps of City Hall, Megamind, standing inside an invisible force field to protect the audience, flung his spiked desk sign in the air, drew his ray gun and blew his Evil Overlord title to bits. Then it took about a month for him and Minion to return or replace all the stolen goods they still had or had used up or destroyed, along with payment to the rightful owners equivalent to what it would have cost to rent the returned items for the length of time they'd had them or to buy them if they could not be returned, plus generous interest. City Hall was the last thing they returned because of the time it took to undo the modifications they'd made, except for the added security features, which they left in place. The new doors to the mayoral office were blastproof.

The move back to the no-longer-evil lair was not popular with fans who had enjoyed seeing him and Minion in City Hall, but those fans mostly stayed with him in spite of their disappointment. A larger contingent of his fan base fell away because of his renunciation of evil. There was a spate of angry I-am-no-longer-your-fan mail, but traffic on the website actually increased as new fans flowed in and took the place of the old.

In the first few days after the renunciation, a number of criminals left Metro City, guessing that the period of license they'd enjoyed under the Evil Overlord was coming to an end. This turned out to be true. While he made special arrangements for all his prison uncles to remain free, the rest received cards saying "The party's over, [name]. Time to turn yourself in." These cards were personally delivered by brainbots, and the implied threat, that if they didn't turn themselves in, the brainbots would lead the police to them, was generally understood, so very few criminals simply ignored them. The prisons gradually filled back up.

A judge in Los Angeles released Natalie Brandt's assets. She flew to Metro City and was reunited with Mohenjo Daro. The tiger had no more excuse to be on the Overlord's payroll, but he had developed a liking for the city, and he was still on retainer with the League of Heroes, who didn't entirely trust Megamind, so he and Natalie went shopping for real estate. The only place they saw that really met their needs was Scott Mansion, so they ended up leasing the grounds and the guest house. (The mansion was still full of Scott family personal effects.) A few members of the staff quit at that point, but not as many as expected, and they were quickly replaced by applicants who were fans of the feline movie star. Natalie kept the ranch in California as their winter place. He stayed active in the sentient animals' community as a way of keeping in contact with Minion.

The hunt resumed without him, rescheduled to begin at three a.m., when the streets were empty, for reasons of public safety. Megamind was unwilling to actually wrestle his volunteer quarry; it was too potentially erotic. Instead, with volunteers unwilling to be TASEd, he used a net. The pool of volunteers spread beyond the masochists' community to include local athletes who were in it for the challenge. The hunt began to be imitated in other cities; it was to become an organized sport, known as Metro City hunting, city hunting or parkour hunting, practiced in the quiet hours in cities around the world.

Catamount took Big Sky's advice. He came to Metro City as a tourist. There he had a real problem with the popular attitude toward the Battle of City Hall. The citizens were proud of Megamind's victory and of the humiliation dealt out to Catamount and his fellow heroes. In his five days there, he got into fourteen shouting matches and punched two men. Then he got a call from Reno. Cowboy Joe, defender of that city, was still locked up, and its defender-in-training, a twenty-one-year-old known as Red Tail, was in over his head, partly as a result of an influx of criminals from Metro City who had noticed that Reno was now under-defended. With a sigh of relief, Catamount left Metro City, never to return.

Megamind was disappointed. He'd been looking forward to an electoral battle. Then Roxanne reminded him that the city's constitution still needed to be amended to allow him a role in the city, and the amendment would need to be ratified by popular vote, so there would still be a political campaign to look forward to. What followed was a lot of discussion. Minion consulted Delia Athelstein, who provided him with a list of the powers that be in the city whose support would be valuable: the Mayor and other government officials, particularly long-serving ones who predated the current administration and had power bases of their own; local political party leaders; the Chamber of Commerce and relevant trade associations such as the Tourism Council; heads of the largest businesses individually; labor union leaders; influential media people such as Frank Bonnin and a handful of miscellaneous distinguished citizens. Most of these people would have nothing substantial to contribute, she explained, but it was important to consult them so as to gain their support or at least forestall opposition. Minion also consulted a few private individuals whose input he and Megamind valued, Uncle Omar being at the top of that list.

Then the two aliens, Roxanne, and two young lawyers, one from each of the major political parties, sat down to hammer out a proposal. They recognized that what they wanted was a change in the constitution that would allow Megamind to do what he was already doing, but in fact most of what he was doing was legal. Only his arbitrary, Overlordly way of imposing his will was in violation of the law, and that would have to change anyway, now that he was good. If he wanted to use his own money to fancy up the exteriors of public buildings, or even donate completely new buildings (such as the new East Metro branch library he had already designed and sited), a mechanism for getting permission to do that was already in place. There was also the consideration that Megamind would not be around forever and that there should be limits to what his successors could get away with. What they came up with was a new government position, to be occupied by a nonhuman citizen who would have the power to grant citizenship to nonhumans with human-level language abilities and the responsibility to look out for the interests of nonhuman citizens and provide a nonhuman perspective on all aspects of governance. It would differ from other advocacy positions such as the Disabilities Commission in that it would have veto power over certain executive branch actions and it would be directly elected, although the mayor would appoint someone temporarily any time the position was vacant between elections. There were also a modest budget, a few ceremonial duties and the best title they could come up with: First Creature.

The same City Council session that named Megamind defender of the city also decreed a special election in five weeks' time, for the purpose of ratifying the amendment creating the position of First Creature. The blue alien campaigned enthusiastically, making speeches in person, television and radio appearances. It wasn't really necessary, given that opposition was limited to a few human exceptionalists and small-government extremists, but it fed his publicity-hound side and gave him experience dealing with the public. Between his days spent learning the new skills of politics and his nights in bed with Roxanne, he was as close to perfectly happy as he had ever been.

The amendment passed easily and he was immediately named to the position. For the celebration that night, the new First Creature had a barge full of fireworks towed out into the lake. A the climax of his speech, surrounded by crowds cheering for him, he pressed a remote and the Death Ray, for the first time in months, went dark. The crowd went quiet with shock, and in that moment of quiet he called out "Roxanne Ritchi, will you marry me?"

"Yes!" she answered, as planned, and a single burst from the Death Ray struck the barge, setting off all the fireworks at once in a spectacular display. The cheering resumed and, as the sound of "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple filled the air, went over into dancing. There was another cheer as the beam of raw power reappeared in its normal place.

###

"You don't have to do it, Roxie."

"Hal-"

"No, seriously. He's good now. That means if you, like, dump him, he'll just have to suck it up, like a regular guy."

"Hal!" She used a warning tone, which shut him up. "Listen. When a woman makes a man fall in love with her, to get him to do what she wants, unless she's a total heartless bitch, there's going to be... rebound."

"Rebound? What do you mean?"

"I love him."

Hal's mouth fell open. His eyes went so wide, they were almost bigger top-to-bottom than they were side-to-side. He looked at her with horror and sorrow and something else. It took a moment to figure out what that look was because it was so unexpected. Pity. Hal pitied her.

"I'm so sorry, Roxie." He looked at the floor, then back at her, and then he turned away. "See you tomorrow."

_He's a human exceptionalist,_ she realized. _He thinks I've lost my human purity. He won't ever look at me with the same stupid, greedy, frustrated adoration again._

Good.

###

Lucille found the Cayman Islands disappointing in one particular respect: most of the available men were her father's age or older, except for the gigolos, and she was still young enough that her ego wouldn't let her pay for male company. Then after one disappointing evening in a bar, a tall, tanned, blond man with the familiar accent of the American upper Midwest approached her. His voice sounded so familiar, in fact, that if she hadn't been drinking, she might have remembered where she'd heard it before and fled. But she was tipsy, bored and lonely and he seemed to be just what she needed. It seemed a little odd that he insisted on getting out of the public eye before he would even kiss her, but she was willing to co-operate. Then instead of a smooch, she got sprayed in the face with something that put her right to sleep. Because she didn't have Roxanne's built-up tolerance for the spray, she slept all night and half the next day. She came to in police custody in Metro City.

###

The five imprisoned heroes were quickly convicted on all counts, but the behind-the-scenes disputes over their sentencing dragged on for months because of the diplomatic issues involved. The five cities that had lent them to SAMCORP's efforts wanted their defenders back. Metro City authorities insisted that letting them off for time already served would undermine the city's authority and cast doubt on its commitment to equality under the law. The Swiss were threatening to take the matter to the International Court of Justice while at the same time offering a large monetary settlement in order to bring their three young heroes home quickly. Reno, backed by SAMCORP, was also waving money around, just to get the whole thing over with and out of the news, while Sioux Falls, home of the Gulon and a much less prosperous polity, was arguing for community service. Megamind (who was known by all concerned to be the real ultimate power in Metro City as long as the Death Ray lit up the sky) was willing to accept all these offers. He only had one additional request: he wanted Argentée's help with the entertainment for his wedding.

###

The Gulon was led from his cell (an ordinary one, since his power was no help in escaping from it) to the small interrogation room where, he was told, the terms of his community service would be explained to him. He waited calmly, even with some hope of things not being too bad, until the door opened and three people came in: two humans and the the person he least wanted to see in the world: Siligili-Reii. One of the humans introduced herself as his parole officer, and the other as Siligili-Reii's translator. After a brief greeting, all human eyes turned to the alien. Instead of speaking, she touched her lower front abdomen, between the shoulders of her forelegs, with the fingertips of both brown hands. An opening appeared there, even darker than her skin. It took him a moment to realize what it was: a pocket universe just like his.

Well, not exactly like. The translator explained that hers was installed, not inborn, and could only open to a width of about two feet because her flesh didn't have the flexibility of his. Among her people, the Colna, it has been a common body modification for field scientists and prospectors such as herself as well as members of several other professions, from emergency medical responders to spies. Naturally as soon as they became common, individuals began to use them in fights, so a device broadcasting the peculiar type of radiant energy that would reduce them to their smallest possible size had become a part of the standard self-defense body modification package that every Colna adult got. This was what had frustrated his attempts to capture her; she still had that device installed and could use it to shut his pocket universe as well as her own.

Humans were capable of producing these pocket universes in the great particle accelerators, and Megamind had figured out how to duplicate the broadcasting devices and the surgical techniques for installing both, suitably modified for the human body. Any humans getting one of these modifications would have to be trained in its use, but Siligili-Reii couldn't do that. It wasn't just that she had no English; her body was too different. His body, however, was not.

That was to be his community service: to meet people who not only didn't despise his mutation, they envied it and wanted to be like him, and to help them as they became like him, to help them do it well.

Just as victory can be the biggest mistake in a person's life, so defeat can be the best thing that ever happened.

###

For a while, in the weeks leading up to the wedding, Megamind was really thinking of using the opportunity to expose Wayne. He had an elaborate plot worked out in which Roxanne would invite Music Man to perform at the reception. At the right moment, Minion as best fish would order the lights lowered, supposedly for some sort of entertainment; Argentée would make them even lower for Wayne than for everybody else, to the point of creating a blind spot for him where the bride and groom stood; and Roxanne would exercise her wonderful throwing arm by lobbing a champagne bottle at the ex-hero's head. So long as everyone saw it hit, shatter and do no harm, it wouldn't matter if he was gone a moment later. They all would have seen and his survival, which was already rumored, would be publicly confirmed.

Roxanne talked him out of it. She understood that he wanted to clear his name and she certainly felt that Wayne deserved the exposure, but she didn't want their wedding reception to be about Wayne. She wanted it to be about herself and her good blue man and their love for each other. Once Megamind understood that executing his plan would mean making Wayne, not Roxanne and himself, the center of attention and the thing people remembered about that reception, he saw things her way. And keeping Wayne's secret would result in the furtherance of his goals in a way that neither of them could foresee at the time.

###

Siligili-Reii's starship was never recovered, but another one eventually was. When Wayne Scott's estate was finally settled, four years after he was pronounced dead, the mansion was finally emptied out. A thing that looked like a cradle with its exterior shaped to resemble a toy rocket was found in the attic. The auctioneer's assistant, who was the first to examine it closely, opened its nose cone and found incomprehensible machinery. She assumed that it was something built by Megamind in his villainous days, confiscated by Metro Man and kept as a souvenir, or to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Now that Megamind was good, the auction house saw no reason not to return it to him. The city's First Creature and Defender had not, in fact, built it, but when he saw it, his face lit with recognition anyway. He had last seen this tiny starship when it knocked his off course on the day he, Minion and the boy who was to become Metro Man came to Earth. For the next six months, he pushed aside most of his other duties and obsessively studied the workings of the little ship. Then he returned to normal life for another two years before he announced that he had tested the first faster-than-light spacecraft ever known to have left Earth. It was a robot probe, programmed to fly a light-year away, photograph its surroundings, then return. An atomic clock was aboard to show how time had passed. So was a pair of mice, one male and one female. At the time of his announcement, the probe had just returned. The clock showed that less than a day had passed, ship time. The photo showed exactly what astronomers predicted would be visible one light year from Earth. The mice were still in good health. They were bred and produced healthy, fertile offspring, both with each other and with mates that had never left Earth. The time had come to begin planning for a manned flight.

###

Roxanne was surrounded by children: her seven-year-old daughter, who looked exactly like her; her five-year-old son, who was blue and bald, two little brown-eyed fishes in globes of something that looked like glass but wasn't, and a little tigress whose birth at the Metro City Zoo five months before had doubled the number of talking tigers in the world. All of them waited on the reviewing stand, watching as Siligili-Reii shook hands with virtually everyone of importance in Metro City as well as several visiting dignitaries. Then the six-limbed alien climbed a long staircase into a steel globe supported on a specially-built scaffolding. As The Metros, a rock band whose lead guitarist was known only as Music Man, struck up a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", the globe rose like a brainbot coming out of dormancy, then kept rising until it disappeared into the summer sky.


End file.
